Tiny tomatoes, big flavor.
Finding big summer flavor in the tiniest package.
Our long-anticipated tomato season is in full swing, and the delicious fruit — yes, tomatoes are a fruit — abound on Bay Area restaurant menus.
Bix Restaurant and Supper Club in San Francisco (56 Gold St.; (415) 433-6300) features sliced tomatoes and Di Stefano burrata from a table-side cart, while Piperade (1015 Battery St., San Francisco; (415) 391-2555) offers an appetizer of toy box tomatoes (mixed varieties of cherry tomatoes) with balsamic vinegar and basil atop a puff pastry crust.
Bix, like Piperade, uses cherry tomatoes, which too often play a supporting role when their larger heirloom siblings are on the plate. But beautiful cherry tomatoes have attributes that make them must-haves in your kitchen. A greater skin-to-flesh ratio helps them hold their shape when baked in a galette or simmered into a bruschetta topping, and their petite size makes them neat and easy to pop into your mouth, providing an explosion of flavor as the tender skin bursts open.
One enthusiastic proponent of the cherry tomato is Jim Miller, owner of Comanche Creek Farms just south of Chico, which specializes in tomatoes. Nearly 70 percent of his acreage is planted to them, including 16 varieties of cherry tomatoes. The small gems ripen earlier than regular-size tomatoes, which means they can be in season as early as mid-May — which is what happened this year because of the warm spring. They’re in good supply through October.