Good quality and tasty hydroponic tomatoes in February

Any suggestions of a grocery store or fruit and vegetable market where I could find hydroponic tomatoes offering enough fresh tomato taste to be slowly cooked in a stew? I had heard, or read somewhere, that Mariano's sold some decent ones that even some local chefs used this winter. But the 2 staff members in the fruit and vegetable dept. at my M. store (on Touhy in Skokie) did not even know what hydroponic meant... I suddenly have a craving for a home-made ratatouille. If none is available I will get back to my regular canned San Marzano's.

Local Foods has had some good ones! I think someone mentioned this elsewhere on the forum, but I vouch for it.

They aren't hydroponic but local (Rochelle) business MightyVine has a giant greenhouse growing tomatoes year-round. They aren't going to make anyone give up summer heirloom tomatoes but they are a darn good tomato in the off-season. They raise a medium and a cherry tomato; the cherry variety is especially flavorful IMO. MightyVine is sold at Local Foods, Whole Foods, and Jewel/Osco (and possibly others).

http://www.mightyvine.com/

annak wrote:Local Foods has had some good ones! I think someone mentioned this elsewhere on the forum, but I vouch for it.

I second Local Foods. I've only tried their cherry tomatoes, which were very good. They also had some medium-sized ones, though not Romas.

Local Foods
1427 W Willow St, Chicago, IL 60642
(312) 432-6575
localfoods.com

The tomatoes from Local Foods are Mighty Vine.

I just wish I could understand restaurants' decisions to put truly awful tomatoes on salads, sandwiches, burgers, etc. This isn't just a winter issue: I've had cromulent tomato slices in August.

I understand that they're expected... but I'd be happier if the menu said, "burgers come with lettuce, and tomato when in season." Cherry and grape tomatoes aren't terribly useful on a burger, but they make a fine substitute for beefsteaks on salads and salsa/pico de gallo. Are they that much more expensive to use? I guess they are: the cheapest you see grapes is about $2/pint at retail, but pale pink tomatoes can still be under $1/lb on sale.

What we need is another common item to put on a sandwich (that isn't mayonnaise), that can take the pressure off restaurants to source tomatoes that are woefully inferior.

And I'm no longer going to be silent. Restaurants that deliver lousy tomatoes are going to know I'm disappointed. Who's with me?

What we need is another common item to put on a sandwich (that isn't mayonnaise), that can take the pressure off restaurants to source tomatoes that are woefully inferior.

In Australia, I enjoyed burgers with chilled slices of beets. Beet slices do provide a bit of extra moisture the way a good tomato slice does. This might not be for everyone, because it seems some have an aversion to beets, but I thought it worked very well. I have been meaning to try this at home. Might work with other types of sandwiches as well.

Ditto the burger beets in Oz: at one of Brisbane's more well-regarded burger places (sorry, can't remember the name, but if necessary I could find it out) I got beet slices on my burger during their dead of Winter (=early July). Can't remember, but maybe it could have been lightly pickled??

Geo

Here's a good article on the Australian tradition of putting beets on burgers:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... alian-dish

A soggy sanger is, indeed, a sad, sad thing.

Who knew that you could get terrific, Illinois-grown tomatoes in February?

The MightyVine tomatoes are tasty, with good color and a nice touch of sweetness. They are small and better-suited for cutting into chunks (as in salad or a side dish) than they are for slicing onto sandwiches.

The pricing has been surprising – and not always in a good way:
1) the Jewel store in Plaza del Lago @ $2.99; 2) the Jewel on Greenbay Road in Wilmette @ $3.49; and 3) the Whole Foods on Greenbay Road in Evanston @ $2.49. Go figure!

While all three prices put the MightyVines at the high end of winter tomato pricing, they have been worth the indulgence.

Two things: if you are stewing the tomatoes I am not sure why you would buy fresh. Whole canned tomatoes are a superior product except at the peak of tomato season and even then it beats a lot of tomatoes you find at the store and at a better price. If you do buy fresh tomatoes off-season it is usually better to go for the smaller cherry/grape etc. tomatoes as is the general consensus in this thread. These are usually properly ripened, but also usually expensive.

Second, JoelF if you are going to use a made-up word then at least use it right . The fabricated meaning of cromulent is acceptable.

Some background on MightyVine: http://resto.newcity.com/2016/02/08/might-vine-say-no-to-tomatoes-that-suck/

Note to self: incorporate "cromulent" into vocabulary.

I recently tried the Mighty Vine tomatoes in a salad (I bought them at Whole Foods) and they were surprisingly good. I broke my normal rule of never buying a fresh tomato in the winter and am glad I did.

the dill pickle food coop (where i am a member/owner) has small, on the vine, greenhouse raised tomatoes that are quite tasty. they were $3.99/lb. yesterday when i bought some to make a BLATS ( BLT +salsa+avocado).

Maybe not exactly what OP specified, but quite respectable taste for February (about $2.49) Gone back twice for more - we eat em like candy.

Thank you to all of you who recommended the hydroponic tomatoes produced by Mighty Vines in Rochelle IL.
My initial intent was to do an experiment and cook a ratatouille in the middle of winter with fresh vegetables: zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and of course onions and garlic.
I prepare this dish, which is one of my favorite ones (I lived in Provence and Languedoc where i was born for many years), very often every year from the end of July to October. Or as soon as the basic ingredients that I find at the Evanston farmers market are good enough to allow me to make a decently flavorful one. But I had never tried to cook one in winter. The major obstacle being the absence of good fresh tomatoes in Chicago. I had posted on the subject on LTH earlier this month because I had read an article somewhere on the web about these locally grown hydroponic tomatoes but could not remember their brand name. Thanks to LTH ers I bought some at Whole Foods in Evanston for $ 2.99 a pound, but back home found out that they were to small and not fleshy or juicy enough for a ratatouille. Besides, the zucchinis and eggplant I bought at WF were not satisfactory for my project. I have plenty of canned San Marzano Italian tomatoes in my pantry that I use all winter long, and even for some sauces in the summer, so tomatoes were in fact not the real problem.
So I decided to use my newly acquired Mighty Vine tomatoes to make a sauce that would top farfalle pasta, to accompany a simple Sunday night dinner of chicken thighs (bone in skin on). I browned the thighs in olive oil in a Le Creuset enameled cast iron pot, where I already have sauteed onions, then I added a few chopped San Marzano tomatoes, about 20 pitted black olives ( Kalamata) 3 cloves of chopped garlic, and some dry French rosé wine. Then I baked it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes.
In the meantime I had seeded the small and medium sized MV tomatoes and diced them small. I slowly sauteed them in olive oil in a stainless steel ``sauteuse`` (sauteing pan) with 3 cloves of garlic (roughly chopped), added salt and pepper and a touch of white wine , covered the pan with its glass lid, and gently cooked them for 20 minutes, crushing the remaining small chunks of tomatoes with a wooden spoon every 5 minutes, until I obtained a texture half-way between a sauce and a coulis. I was tempted to add some dry thyme but did not do it to save the original flavor of the tomatoes.
Believe me these Mighty Vine tomatoes were very tasty, even though for some of you this dish probably contains too much tomatoes and garlic. Not a problem for me.

Monteverde restaurant is featuring Mighty Vine tomatoes and I was extraordinarily impressed by their flavor when I had them last weekend.

No Mighty Vine at my Jewel

MightyVine to double tomato operation

Just months after growing its first tomato, MightyVine, a Rochelle-based hydroponic tomato farm, is doubling its operation to meet rising demand in grocery stores and restaurants in the Chicago area.

Beginning in late spring, another 7.5-acre greenhouse will be constructed adjacent to the existing facility in Rochelle, about 80 miles west of Chicago, said MightyVine Chairman Jim Murphy, doubling production to about 900,000 pounds of tomatoes a month in peak conditions.

Competition appears imminent. BrightFarms, a New York-based company, will begin operating this summer and has a deal to grow greens and tomatoes for Roundy's stores, including Mariano's.

I had an amazing tomato salad at Swift and Sons last week... never would have ordered it unless the waiter damn near insisted. They were MightyVine.

I go to Local Foods for these at a minimum. They're that good.