Richard Ha writes:

I’ve had a strong interest in heirloom tomatoes since we grew our first ones a couple years ago. They were far and away tastier than any of the regular tomatoes. And heirlooms hold together better.

I was fascinated by the fact that there were several hundred varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and I wanted to grow the best of the best. But where to start? When we first heard about the Tomato Fest at Carmel, California—and that it was all about heirloom tomatoes—we had to come and see what was up.

We have not been disappointed.

We arrived at the Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley Sunday an hour and a half before the gates opened and a lot of people were already there. The shuttle buses were running and there was a line waiting to get in.

The event is a charitable fund raiser for the Chef and Child Foundation, a project of the American Culinary Federation. Some consider it Central California’s best annual food and wine event. We bought VIP tickets because in addition to contributing to the good cause, we wanted an opportunity to check out the many different heirloom tomato varieties.

And that way we got to meet the Tomato Fest director Gary Ibsen and his wife Dagma Lacey, too. Gary started the Tomato Fest 15 years ago as a way for family and friends to celebrate the season’s tomato harvest, and it has since grown to 3,000 participants.

The VIP tent was buzzing by 11:30, an hour before start time, and there was a line for wine and a double line for samplings of tomato dishes. We got a glass of wine and sat down next to a guy wearing a Poipu Beach shirt. He was from Hawai‘i, in town to attend his third Tomato Fest and to golf.

Musicians kept the mood in the VIP tent upbeat. We each received a tray that holds the souvenir wine glass and pupu so one hand is free.

We were allowed into the display area a little ahead of the 12:30 start time and headed straight for the heirloom tomato sampling tent. The large tent was devoted entirely to the display and tasting of heirloom tomatoes. Not to sound like a Dr. Seuss book, but there truly were big ones, little ones, green ones, purple ones, red ones, white ones, yellow with stripe ones, round ones, long ones and everything in between ones.

Tables were set up around the perimeter and tomatoes were displayed on a continuous line so people could sample and keep moving. Each was displayed on an upside-down plastic glass, which served as a pedestal that showed off the whole fruit. On the platter below were small cubed pieces to taste with a toothpick.

When we got there, no one had yet sampled any tomatoes yet and the display was perfect. The tomatoes were of all shapes, sizes and many different colors. I took more than 50 pictures of the more than 200 different varieties on display and sampled even more.

When the gates opened up it was a madhouse—people were trying to taste as much as they could and as fast as they could. It was very interesting listening in on conversations of non-farmers talking about heirloom tomatoes. I can’t imagine any other type of tomato generating this much interest. I sense that interest is building in Hawai‘i, as well, and we want to bring to Hawai‘i the very best varieties we can find.

Once we finished with the variety tasting, we visited the three tents with the chefs’ creations. The chefs did a great job creating their dishes and it was apparent that they put a lot of effort into it.

There was a tomato tower, made of carmelized onions and slices of different colored cocktail-sized heirloom tomatoes. Another tasted suspiciously like Kalua pig and heirloom tomatoes served on a toasted cracker. The tomato sorbet was surprisingly good: refreshing with a hint of basil, and leeks sauteed with something sweet and tasty underneath.

We had a tomato shooter made up of yellow lemon boy tomato soup with a red heirloom tomato soup on top. The instructions read: “Sip the red soup and notice the burn, and then drink the rest of the lemon boy soup with syrup to top it off.” It was very good.

There was a slab of heirloom tomato that was red, flecked throughout with yellow, something like a striped German heirloom tomato. It looked like a 10-pound slab of ahi.

The chef made smaller squares about an inch and a half square served on a toothpick. I don’t have a clue how he did it. It tasted like heirloom tomatoes with basil and was delicious.

We went from station to station. It moved very rapidly and was a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. I looked forward to finding out, at each station, how I would be surprised yet again. It was a spectacular tasting event.

The whole area was as big as maybe three or four football fields. In the middle, there was a sit-down area of 30 or 40 tables. Along the sides were specialty tents with some of the commercial tomato-grower sponsor booths, wine tasting booths with wines from the Monterey area, olive oil from local orchards as well as other products. There was a stage and a live band that kept people jumping all day with songs like “Lucille.” We stopped at the fried green tomato booth. Maybe something for our fruit stand/snack bar?

There was a Farmers Market booth where people could buy a basket of mixed varieties of heirloom tomatoes. The mixed basket looked so farm fresh. This is decidedly different from the all-same look of commercial tomatoes.

People were paying close attention to a chef preparing a tomato dish from a mini-cooking stage. Close by was a souvenir tent selling t-shirts, baseball caps and other things. I got several Tomato Fest baseball caps and June got some t-shirts.

The influence of the Tomato Fest is pretty evident. We had lunch at a small cafe at the Barnyard Shopping Center in Carmel and there were heirloom tomatoes on the salad bar. Heirlooms were also served in salads in place of regular tomatoes.

That evening we had dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey and noticed heirloom tomatoes in the regular salad there as well. I commented to the waiter that we had come from the Tomato Fest and he said that he just recently started eating tomatoes; and that it was only because he tasted heirloom tomatoes and liked them. Before that he had hated tomatoes.

I feel that heirloom tomatoes could be very popular in Hawai‘i. When we get home, we’ll start to increase our supply and see what we can do about bringing heirloom tomatoes to the masses.