An Eastern Shore Tomato Tasting
When I think of an emblamatic Maryland food – something that represents the abundance that Marylanders have enjoyed, the unique terroir, a key component of past economy – I think of Eastern Shore Tomatoes. My passion for Eastern Shore tomatoes (and watermelons) cannot be over-stated.
Three standard meals fed us during the summers at my grandparents’ Chincoteague trailer. Scrapple folded into a piece of white bread was a typical breakfast. A feast of the days’ haul of flounder was often fried up dinner. And lunch and/or an afternoon snack: sliced, salted tomatoes – sometimes between two slices of white bread.
I’m forever chasing the flavor of those tomatoes. Even with our CSA in full swing, I can’t pass through the Eastern Shore in August without coming home with some tomatoes. This week I took that to extremes.
The tomato corridor along route 50 can be daunting. Stand after stand of tantalizing produce.
interactive map!
We stopped at the first ten stands on the westbound side of 50, starting at Rt 13. A few more stands exist after that but this is Tomato Alley, mostly located in Hebron, MD.
This is far from a thorough survey and we may not be experts. I used a wine-tasting guide as an outline.
Tomatoes can vary in flavor from year to year, plant to plant, and even fruit to fruit. One example of the questions raised by this sampling is the difference in rating between The Farmer’s Wife and S&H Farms. As it turned out, these stands are operated by the same people. Yet we found the Farmers Wife tomatoes to be most attractive in appearance but not up to the flavor of the S&H tomato.
We generally agreed that the tomatoes from Oakley’s Farm Market and S&H were the best, at least on this day. It’s fascinating trying them all side by side and seeing how different they really are. Some have little to no aroma, some smell like tomato vines, some are perfumey and floral. All were superior to a grocery store tomato.
