TOMATO DINNERS
August 25, 26, and 27, 2004
Wednesday through Friday
 View menu (PDF)
This year marks Oliveto's fifteenth annual Dinners for Tomatoes, the first tomato event having taken place in 1990. These dinners provide an excellent way to look at the remarkable achievement of local farmers in making so many exquisite heirloom varieties widely available, vine-ripened.
The first Oliveto tomato event was historic in another sense too, offering dishes that traced the cooking of Italy beginning before the New World fruit was introduced to Europe. And UC Davis contributed a "museum" of historic varieties of tomatoes, including the original, tiny tomato from the coastal regions of Peru, Lycopersicum pimpinellifolium.
Another of our early tomato events offered an afternoon tasting of over 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. And accompanying the 1993 dinners was a tasting of, and heated panel discussion about, the bioengineered tomato 'Flav-r-Savr.'
When, in 1994, Chef Paul Bertolli presented the dinners he called "Twelve Ways of Looking at Tomatoes," the New York Times applauded, and put our tomato events on the map. A more recent tomato dinner featured the tomatoes from three different farms, and compared the effects of climate, cultural practices, and soil--terroire--on their tomatoes.
This year, chefs Paul Bertolli and Paul Canales will devise an à la carte menu based on the finest of the season's great variety of tomatoes, using dishes and ideas developed over the past 15 years. These may well be the best tomato dinners yet.
Please join us for an event which has become for many a favorite, and which represents our homage to summer.
Reservations are strongly recommended. |
