Yes, the first farm-fresh tomato picked off the vine does scream summer, loud and clear. And summer’s traditional all-star combination of flavors is that of tomato and basil. Sure, you might decide to add a dash of salt or create a mouthwatering tomato, mozzarella and basil salad, or slap the tomato and basil between two slices of bread. But, at its heart, summer = a freshly harvested, off the vine tomato, flavored with basil, the herbal star of the season.


This combo is an ideal example of how even the simplest of food pairings, when ingredients are of quality, can become a dish to remember. It’s an ideal example of how you don’t always need a long list of ingredients or complex culinary procedures to put together something that tastes incredibly delicious.

Shopping List

• Tomatoes
• Basil

Done.

Farmer Lee Jones and Fresh Tomatoes

Now that the shopping list is out of the way, it’s time for an update. In 2017, we asked Farmer Lee to name his favorite tomato. He assured us that he could—but then he needed another minute to think about it. And then another minute. You get our drift. Ultimately, this was his answer: “It was definitely a cherry tomato! Or, err, maybe an heirloom tomato . . . or a toy box tomato. Or maybe a currant tomato.”

So, we promised our readers an update once we could get his answer pinned down.

In 2018, we asked him, once again, about his favorite—but he was busy strolling among the crops, rattling off the list of possibilities. In fact, we were starting to worry about where he’d wandered off, and were about to send out a search party when we saw him with fresh soil beneath his fingernails, muttering, “Green Bee Tomatoes, Sun Gold Tomatoes, Pineapple Tomatillo, Sweet Pea Currant, Mixed Toy Box . . .”


Fast forwarding to 2019, the good news is that he’s finally made his decision! Seriously. He told us he did. The bad news? He got another phone call and so we’ve been on hold for a while.

A really long while.

So, in the meantime, here are links where you can explore the possibilities:

• Fresh cherry tomatoes
• Fresh currant tomatoes
• Fresh toy box tomatoes

When Farmer Lee gets off the phone, we’ll ask again about his favorite tomato, as well as his favorite kind of basil. Hang tight.

Tomatoes and Basil in Cuisines

Tomatoes play a key role in many cuisines from around the world, but we’re focusing on Italian dishes here because of a story that reflects the importance of tomato, mozzarella and basil. In 1889, Raffaele Esposito created a dish to honor Queen Margherita of Savoy. This dish, named the Margherita pizza, became quite popular because its ingredients echoed the colors of the Italian flag:

• red tomatoes
• white mozzarella cheese
• green basil

This wasn’t the first time these ingredients were combined in an Italian dish. That happened in 1866, but it was the 1889 dish that made tomato, mozzarella and basil a centerpiece combination for the Italian cuisine.


Next, we’re going to delve into the very important issue of quality. With food as wonderful as tomatoes and basil, we believe that people shouldn’t settle for anything but the best.

Testing Our Tomatoes

In a single year’s time, we’ve grown more than 150 varieties of tomatoes, Farmer Lee Jones explained to Ohio Magazine, and then we sell about 100 of them. The rest are grown for research purposes so we can experiment and learn, and then develop exactly the right tomatoes for our chefs. We might, for example, have a chef who needs a small, high-impact tomato, one that’s high in acid and moisture, with thick skin. Because of what we learn through our research, we can provide that chef with exactly what he or she needs.


Testing goes far beyond just the tomato, but it serves as an example for the research and development, quality control, and customer service that permeates everything we do at the farm. We’re just as thorough in how we research and grow our basil varieties.

Varieties of Farm-Fresh Basil

Overall, fresh basil offers up a floral aroma, along with a unique flavor that’s sort of sweet and sort of spicy. Varieties that we grow include:

• African Blue basil: This basil variety is rich and mellow, ideal for seasoning dishes that feature red meat, chicken or fish, plus in soups and salads. Leaves are a slightly grayed shade of green, with speckled purple underneath. The buds are purple and open into delicious and lovely lavender flowers.
• Opal basil: This variety is light, sweet and mild, an excellent choice if you want a fresh basil flavor that isn’t overpowering. Initially, the flavor offers up a touch of lemon-lime, and the texture is succulent and crunchy. Leaves range from light to dark purple.
• Thai basil: This is the basil to choose if you want to add a slightly anise flavor to your dishes. Thai basil is clean, sweet and refreshing, nice and juicy. The texture is smooth and soft, and the stem is crispy. The herb is purple with green leaves.
• Traditional basil: Think about the flavors of pepper, anise, and mint in an extremely aromatic fresh herb with melt in your mouth flavor and texture. Fresh basil leaves are a lovely deep green.
• Lemon basil: Fresh lemon basil offers up a lemony aroma, adding the zippy flavor of lemon zest to your dishes. Leaves are light green, with a nice texture; the stem is crunchy.
• Mixed basil: Get the best of all worlds by using mixed basil, the best of the day harvested fresh.

With so many choices of basil—and of tomatoes—there are clearly countless ways to pair up fresh tomatoes and basil for unforgettable dishes and menus. Here’s more about why certain food pairings work as well as they do.

What Makes a Perfect Pairing?

Why, for example, is tomato and basil such a perfect pairing? Why do heirloom tomatoes pair up so well with fresh micro basil?

For that answer, we turn to Jamie Simpson, executive chef of the Culinary Vegetable Institute, who says the following. “The short answer is that tomato and basil pair well together, aromatically speaking.”

He also believes, though, that there’s more to the picture. “This food pairing,” he continues, “is actually largely driven as a cultural thing. In other words, people are used to seeing tomato and basil used together in dishes, and they’re used to eating them together, when you could really do the same thing with tomato and marigold, or tomato and mint, as just two examples.” 

In Asian countries, Chef Jamie points out, chefs and diners might use soy sauce as the condiment for tomatoes while, in the United States, we might add salt. It’s for the same purpose but using different ingredients. “When you want to challenge yourself, to get out of the box, you can take classic cultural staples, like tomato and basil, and find other ingredients with the same intensity to come up with new food pairings. Experiment.”

Cultural-Specific Food Pairings

There are intriguing facts about food pairings and how they’re viewed in Western cuisines versus Asian ones. In Western cuisines, for example, food pairings are considered successful if the ingredients have similar flavor profiles that blend well together. In Asian cuisines, though, chefs tend to avoid ingredients that have similar flavors. In fact, the more flavors that two ingredients have in common, the less likely that chefs will pair them in Asian cuisines. In contrast, in North America, same 13 core ingredients are found in 74.4 percent of dishes. These ingredients include butter, milk, eggs, cane molasses, wheat and vanilla.

Based on that, it’s reasonable to say that the idea of food pairings really is a Western notion, not necessarily a global one.

Aromatics and Pairings

Returning to Chef Jamie’s comment about aromatics and pairing, how we interpret a smell in connection with a taste is also cultural. People in the United States and other Western cultures, for example, typically connect the smell of vanilla with sweetness. This is something that, because of cultural-based food pairings, our brains automatically do. In Asia, though, vanilla is more often used in savory dishes, so people there typically connect the smell of vanilla with a salty taste.

Influenced by Our Environment (and Genetics, Too!)

Common sense backs up the idea that we eat the foods that are more readily available to us, and we often learn to like the foods that people around us are appreciating. Always true? No. Typically true? Yes.

And, science backs up this notion, as well, with studies sharing how much of “our food loves and hates are learned,” with flavors often “programmed according to how we usually consume them.”  

Scientific research also shows how food preferences are actually built into our very DNA, which may be more surprising. Based upon genetics, each person can experience taste differently, as the basic tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami—are detected in a unique way on his or her tongue. More specifically, each person may experience a flavor differently because we each have different amounts of the various receptors on our tongues. Because of this, differences in taste sensitivities exist based on geography.

Pair Up with The Chef’s Garden

For more than 30 years, the Jones family and everyone at The Chef’s Garden have devoted themselves to work in tandem with the world’s most extraordinary chefs. We hold plenty of conversations and we collaborate together, with the ultimate result being a narrative that’s intrinsic to the quality of the products we grow and the sustainable agricultural practices we implement to do it.


The foundation of this philosophy is our soil, which we are continually replenishing with nutrients that are depleted over time to produce the most nutritionally dense fresh vegetables possible. By replenishing our soil naturally and giving it the time it needs, it delivers to us products of unrivaled quality and flavor.

We recognize and embrace traditional farming philosophies and techniques that have sustained our farmers for generations and, since we recognize the profound importance of growing crops through a natural, environmentally friendly way, we are deeply committed to “growing vegetables slowly and gently, in full accord with nature.”

We are genuinely proud of the deep and authentic relationships we have developed with the chefs we have worked with over the years, something we call The Chef and Farmer Concept®. We are relentlessly devoted to delivering to chefs exactly what they require. We are here to serve as your personal farmer and will grow for you virtually anything that your creativity inspires. Innovation is a guiding principle at the farm, and we are continuously developing new product sizes, colors, textures and flavors for you to taste that we hope will galvanize your imagination, spark a fresh idea and keep your guests marveling at the dishes you serve them in your restaurant. We’re also always on the lookout for heirloom vegetables sourced the world over that are unique, extraordinary and have an enticing story to tell.

We’d love to have you join in this ongoing conversation. If we can help you with farm-fresh produce, please contact us online and an experienced product specialist will provide you with exactly what you need, right when you need it.