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Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

croatiaweek.com

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Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#31

Post by nickpp »

317070 wrote: post #4
rini17 wrote: post #2

Oh my. Everyone who cares about tomatoes grows their own, supermarkets are for the rest. They are not demanding and will grow anywhere there's sun, including in pot on balcony.

Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?

Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies.

Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often secondary.

You wanna fight that? Fight all regulations for small and local producers, even if it sounds like it’s well intended (hygiene, quality standards, subventions). Talk to your representative about it too. Finally, buy local and from smallest producer you can find.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#32

Post by em500 »

wafflemaker wrote: post #14

I'm Polish expat living in Norway. There are no tomatoes to be had in Norway... Just kidding. I'm actually kind of alright with the small ones (pearl tomatoes), any other don't taste like tomatoes. I believe, that the Norwegian people are so used to blandly tasting vegetables, that the worst and least ripe product parties are send to Norway. But my wife and her family are tomato people. Every time we visit Poland or…

I won't comment on the tomatoes, but as far as eggs are concerned, I'm skeptical that any claims about people being able to taste any diffence would hold up in a proper blind taste test. Conclusion from Serious Eats when they attempted to do that:

  It was pretty clear evidence that as far as eggs go, the mindset of the taster has far more bearing on the flavor of the egg than the egg itself.
https://www.seriouseats.com/what-are-the-best-eggs

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#34

Post by kungito »

trte9343r4 wrote: post #27

Croatia has horrible food, locals can not afford quality food. This country was overrun by tourists, and is now more expensive than Italy. Recent adoption of Euro was the last nail in a coffin. Go to Greece, if you want "authentic local tomato from street-market".

Croatia is having its "bully" tourism phase. They have been historically super cheap and undiscovered location up until 5-10 years ago and now that they are in EU and Schengen and it's actually nicer than some bigger mediterranean countries everyone started piling in. The locals which aren't really business savvy started doubling/tripling prices to see how far it can go without providing additional services or raising the quality to another level. From business perspective it does make actual sense since last few seasons after corona have been breaking records every year. Until there are actual consequences for raising per night booking prices from 100€ to 200€ from year to year nothing will change. I think that the reality is that people "in the know" like polish/chech families are being priced out because traditionally they didn't have as many western european tourists like Dutch or French and now it's on their radar

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#35

Post by trte9343r4 »

kungito wrote: post #34
trte9343r4 wrote: post #27

Croatia has horrible food, locals can not afford quality food. This country was overrun by tourists, and is now more expensive than Italy. Recent adoption of Euro was the last nail in a coffin. Go to Greece, if you want "authentic local tomato from street-market".

Croatia is having its "bully" tourism phase. They have been historically super cheap and undiscovered location up until 5-10 years ago and now that they are in EU and Schengen and it's actually nicer than some bigger mediterranean countries everyone started piling in. The locals which aren't really business savvy started doubling/tripling prices to see how far it can go without providing additional services or raisin…

> think that the reality is that people "in the know" like polish/chech families are being priced out

Not really. They are not poor anymore, and can afford it. But quality is just not there compared to Italy, Greece, Egypt...

Only benefit for Polish and Czech tourist, they understand local language.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#36

Post by the_gipsy »

nickpp wrote: post #31
317070 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?

Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies. Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often…

You seriously think that small shops would be competitive if there were no subsidies? No hygiene I could maybe buy, but it goes hand in hand with quality, and there is practically no regulation for that: it's self imposed by the consumer picking pretty produce.

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#37

Post by imiric »

trte9343r4 wrote: post #27

Croatia has horrible food, locals can not afford quality food. This country was overrun by tourists, and is now more expensive than Italy. Recent adoption of Euro was the last nail in a coffin. Go to Greece, if you want "authentic local tomato from street-market".

> Croatia has horrible food

Anthony Bourdain disagreed[1]:

> This is world class food, this is world class wine, this is world class cheese. The next big thing is Croatia.

This was in 2012, before Croatia joined the EU, but the culture of quality cuisine doesn't change in a decade.

I can't speak about the prices, but I'm sure there are affordable restaurants and markets outside of touristy zones. Go to any popular place in the world, Greece included, and you'll pay the tourist tax.

[1]: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h8rqf

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#38

Post by the_gipsy »

ein0p wrote: post #25
chongli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting a tomato go fully ripe on the plant is an easy way to attract birds and lose a substantial amount of the crop. There’s no reason for it either. Once the tomato reaches the breaker stage (starting to change colour) it is internally cut off from the mother plant and will not be adversely affected by being harvested.

If we’re talking the peak flavor tomato that “capitalism” purportedly can’t produce, that is only available when you pick it from the vine, already ripe. It is true that tomatoes will ripen if picked “brown”, but they’re less flavorful than vine ripened. Source: picked a few tons of tomatoes every summer as a kid.

Source: anecdotal

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#39

Post by defrost »

apavlinovic wrote: post #30

I am Croatian, and I know exactly what the article is referring to. So much that we decided to grow our own tomatoes this year. The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally, and the reality is that we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists. We were very lucky to have a great harvest of cherry, monte carlo, and plum tomatoes this year, all of which serve a differ…

> Croatia has incredible food ..

and a great 80's power pop surf band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCuCg-UM-U

( even if they were ex-pat croatians )

Re: Tomato nostalgia as I relive my Croatian island childhood

#40

Post by specproc »

For those in the audience that have only ever eaten supermarket tomatoes, I'm sorry to say you've probably never really eaten a tomato.

I live in a small, agricultural country and the article resonated. Over the last 10 years supermarkets and imported vegetables have become a much more important part of our national diet.

It's such an important staple food. Historically very cheap (because widely grown) wildly diverse, and rich in flavour and nutrients. I love our _real_ tomatoes. Traditionally served in a simple salad with cucumber, salt and herbs, but so good you can just cut them up, leave them in the sun for an hour, and devour.

Supermarket tomatoes are a blight upon humanity: much higher in cost (where I live), devoid of taste, and available in only a handful of varieties. I dread the slow march of progress through our table.

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