Taste Tomato Thursdays

It's all about tomatoes at the Taste booth last Thursday at the SF Ferry building farmer's market. You are probably familiar with Taste catering since Yigit Pura, The first winner of Top Chef's Just Desserts, is from Taste. Taste is showcasing their "Taste tomato" which is a small sweet tomato that has a skin that looks like an heirloom and is a smaller version of a Roma tomato. It is bred by Baia Nicchia Farm & Nursery. Taste will be at the Thursday market for 6 weeks starting Thursday, August 4, 2011.

I haven't been at the Thursday market for a while. There's a lot of things happening when I went. Tacolicious with their guest chef series, Takoyaki by Delica and Taste with their tomato showdown. Their menu consists of a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, fried tempura tomatoes with padron peppers and squash blossom, a tomato and squash tart, a meatball sandwich and a tomato aqua fresca.

Grilled cheese and tomato

Tomato and squash tart

For lunch I had the Summer Tempura basket as my appetizer and the meatball sandwich for the real deal. The tempura basket was good. Padron peppers were just perfect and the tomatoes were really sweet. If you haven't tasted a padron pepper, it's as sweet as a green bell pepper and a little smaller than a jalapeno. There were only one squash blossom which was pretty good, about 3 taste tomatoes, 2 padron peppers and 1 small green tomato on that basket. It was a good start but not enough to fill you up.

The meatball sandwich was a good call. It's a very hearty sandwich. You can taste the sweetness of the tomato and the salsa verde gives it a nice kick. I definitely recommend the meatball sandwich if you happen to be there.