You Said Tomato And We Gave You A Show!

Rubies that shone like diamonds

The full taste explosion of the Ruby Red tomato was demonstrated on the BelOrta stand at the International Food & Drink Event last week at Excel.

Though the season is yet to start in the majority of Europe BelOrta’s object of delight – the exquisite Ruby Red – was showing all its promise.

Getting sweetness into a tomato out of season was previously impossible but with Belgian company BelOrta, the future is now.

The Ruby Red is a small gem of ripe tomato flesh with good sweetness and flavour and was a hit with the chefs on demo duty.

Over the three days of the show chefs Danny Burns, Luciana Berry, Bob Carruthers, Martyn Watkins, Exose Grant and Nick Vadis all enjoyed the Ruby Red and what it brought to their dishes.

Luciana Berry, Top Chef Brasil winner, said: “I loved the Ruby Red tomato. Where I come from in Brazil we have amazing tomatoes but these small little gems from BelOrta were fabulous in March. They had great colour, taste and texture and out of season were nothing short of amazing.”

Nick Vadis, Culinary Director for Compass UK and Chef Ambassador to The NHS was very impressed with the Ruby Red tomatoes from BelOrta, he said

“I chose to do a take on a caprese salad with burrata, basil oil and pickled onion slices, which proved a real hit.  It was also a great opportunity to tell the audience about the health benefits of tomatoes. The flavour of  BelOrta tomatoes is so delicious, that you don’t really have to do much to them – A lovely ingredient!”

Exose Grant was equally impressed with the Ruby Red tomatoes and opted to make an impromptu sauce with all of the offcuts from his demo and people were asking for the recipe card…unfortunately we didn’t have one as he made the beautifully spicy sauce on the spot in a culinary mega mix with all of the chefs cooking-up a delicious lunch.

Didier Lepoutre, Supervisor for Market Development and Expansion at BelOrta said: “A big thanks to Red Cherry and The Chefs’ Forum, the best brand activation company we’ve ever worked with – and that’s saying something. We take our tomatoes all over the world and Red Cherry really understood what we wanted to achieve at IFE and they certainly delivered.”