Behold The Kumato

In case the fact that I draw the things I eat has not tipped you off, I admit that I am not cool. I never have been, and at this stage of the game, I'm okay with the fact that I never will be.

Given that I am coolness-challenged, I am unlikely to have heard of the kumato unless a Foodie friend served it to me. Which one did, at a dinner party on New Year's Eve. Basically, a kumato is a brown tomato. Even on the kumato website (and it does have one, that's how cool it is), they are hard pressed tell you what sets it apart from a regular tomato besides its color.

The color is odd. A kumato kind of looks shenanigans have been going on between a tomato, a plum, and a meatball while the light is off in the refrigerator. According to the website, the color, flavor, and size are fairly consistent from kumato to kumato because they are grown hydroponically and "ripened under optimum climactic conditions." All of which makes me think that the fruit has never actually seen the light of day.

The website insists that the taste of a kumato is far superior to a regular tomato, but even they have difficulty describing why. To be honest, the taste didn't knock my socks off. It was good. It was certainly better than a lot of the watery tomatoes available at this time of year. It was maybe a little firmer and sweeter than a regular tomato.

But you know how in late August and early September, the tomatoes at the farmer's market are so good that you make caprese salad almost every night and have BLTs every day for lunch? How the bright red color of the tomatoes makes you start looking for new gazpacho recipes, and you start wondering if you can preserve a bit of this perfect tomato moment by making a big pot of pasta sauce and freezing it?

The kumato wasn't that good. And maybe that's a good thing, because perfect moments become less perfect if you can have them anytime.