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Comment by apavlinovic | Hacker News Reader

I am Croatian, and I know exactly what the article is referring to. So much that we decided to grow our own tomatoes this year.

The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally, and the reality is that we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists.

We were very lucky to have a great harvest of cherry, monte carlo, and plum tomatoes this year, all of which serve a different purpose:

- Cherry for salads and side dish

- Monte Carlo for cooking

- Plum tomatoes for everything in between

Croatia has incredible food, especially the local, homegrown stuff, and it is well worth the effort to get it.

Here's an image of some of our crop: https://imgur.com/5FfdvG6

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I'm from the Netherlands and

> The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally, and the reality is that we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists.

This hurts, and it's absolutely true.

Makes me wonder why we spend so much in subsidies for the dutch tomato growers, if nobody actually likes eating them.

For what it's worth, I get them in the supermarket, grown in spain, if at all possible.

To be fair Looye honey tomatoes are tasty (and expensive), although I find them a bit on the "artificial tasty" side. Tasty Toms are quite ok. Snack tomatoes (snoeptomaatjes) are a hit and miss.

While I admire these successes, the hard truth is that 90% of the Dutch tomato produce is landfill material. Overall tomato cultivation in the Netherlands feels like a vanity project to prove the farming prowess of the country.

There was an item about this on the news where they interviewed a grower about this (it was strawberries in that item, but it's basically the same idea) and the grower was sad about it as well, because he hated the supermarkets for forcing them to sell inferior product.

The problem is not that they can't make delicious food, it's that no one is willing to pay for it. Strawberries are already expensive, and perfectly ripe strawberries would be even more expensive.

You have the slightly tastier "Tasty Tom" tomatoes that are 30% more expensive that are already a tough sell.

The harsh truth is that people keep buying the trash tomatoes, so the growers grow them.

There's also a weird spiral going on where life has become more expensive, which made things like farming good tasting tomatoes on a Croatian island infeasible, which in turn made good tasting tomatoes too expensive to buy for people living on a Croatian island.

Maybe the Netherlands are different, but I find it's usually not that specific countries make trash fruits and veggies, but export-bound fruits and vegetables have transport concerns that require them to be picked before they reach their peak. Here, american blueberries and strawberries are big, bland and watery, local ones are juicy, sweet, tart and delicious. Or corn, theirs is bland, ours is sweet. But I'm not convinced that americans that live near those farms have the same experience at all.

When I grow my tomatoes, they are usually picked at their peak ripeness, they were being pumped full of sugar and nutrients by the plant until the last second when I picked them and cooked with them. The ones that have to travel are picked before ripe, and "ripen" sad and alone in a truck with no extra nutrients, and when they reach me looking "ripe", it's usually a facade. Local market fruits and vegetables stand somewhere in between, depending on volume and channel it's being sold in.

There is a difference though between fruits and vegetables imported for year round availability, and those imported as a seasonal bounty; the later ones maintain quality as it sells relatively quickly in season and doesn't need to be picked as much in advance.

Yeah, eating local and in season fruits and vegetables should give you all the benefits. Eating imported/out of season fruits and vegetables will come but with worse taste and probably more expensive.

> corn, theirs is bland, ours is sweet.

Maize starts converting sugars into starches the moment it's harvested. That's why fresh-picked is so important: even within a few hours, the flavor changes.

That's also why frozen or canned corn is a good idea: picked at the peak of ripeness and almost immediately has its enzymes deactivated either by freezing or boiling. Aside from texture issues (which won't matter for many applications like soups and smoothies), frozen vegetables and berries have better taste than "fresh" from the produce department for most products, most of the year. Also why so many cooks swear by canned tomatoes for sauces: they're better quality tomatoes picked at peak ripeness, but the only way they can travel is frozen or canned. And nobody freezes tomatoes; it screws up the texture so badly that canning is no worse and possibly better, plus it's expensive to deal with cold chain (whereas a pallet of San Marzano tomatoes can sit on a shelf until it rusts through with little loss of flavor and no maintenance other than the shelf it sits on).

Another croatian chiming in, I get most of my vegetables from my mother's garden, I think that's true for a lot of croats who live in the cities but have parents in the countryside.

So, where in Makarska region should one go to get some? ;)

Are those "local" sellers near the beach really local? Or do they just resell stuff from Kaufland/Lidl to naive tourists for inflated prices?

I don't know, the green market (pazar) should be local farmers (OPG), but a common story is that some of them buy at supermarkets and resell at higher prices.

Not a Croatian, but I visit the Zadar / Ugljan area every couple of years. Last time a Bosnian friend visited from Banja Luka and she brought some tomatoes with her. They were phenomenal <3

Bosnian here from near Banja Luka and fully agree. Like others said it's mostly about being home grown and most importantly picked at the right time. But, Krajina tomatoes kick things ;).

Ex-pat Croat here. I came for a visit recently and I can't figure out how in the world there are so many Kauflands/Lidls/Konzums everywhere. Compared to Boston Metrowest the density just seems way out of whack. Is it the lack of property taxes? Maybe it's the tourists?

Well, from my experience, Lidl and Kaufland have stores pretty much everywhere in Europe. The Croatian ones are usually packed full of locals and tourists.

Quite a lot of people who travel to the Adriatic Coast use them to resupply. The local supermarkets are a lot more expensive, so if you're staying in an apartment at the beach for a week or two, it's worth it to make a few trips to a nearby Lidl to buy all the food, even if it means some extra driving.

Most stores there are probably quite empty during winter.

Spent about a week and a half in Croatia (mainly on Vis). Food was quite flavorful. We spent the prior ten days across the Adriatic in Vieste/the Gargano. Both countries have great food. Bread, for me, wasn't as good in Croatia as it was in Italy.

> Croatia has incredible food ..

and a great 80's power pop surf band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZCuCg-UM-U

( even if they were ex-pat croatians )

The thing is, you can now find good all year grown tomatoes in shops, just not in Croatian shops unfortunately. (speaking as a Croatian living in Denmark) In Denmark, even Lidl now has premium tomatoes that have good taste and smell. They are "pricy", so they are on average x3 the default tasteless, unripe ones. Considering they are properly ripe, part of the price is certainly just to cover much greater waste due to them going bad or getting bruised.

Why do tomatoes from Netherlands look so perfect, but taste so bland? I never understand it. I guess that they look perfect because they are grown in a green house, so no pests.

Real question: Why do tomatoes from south Europe taste so much better? Is it the sunshine, or the soil? Or is the gene stock of the tomatoes? Or... everything?

Tomatoes are a climacteric fruit, meaning they have a ripening period after which they start to decompose. Mass-produced climacteric fruits are picked underripe to ensure stability during transport.

The flavours that make garden-fresh tomatoes develop only when the fruit is allowed to ripen on the vine. As a result, you’re very likely not to have full flavour from supermarket fruit.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6895250/

Tomatoes in supermarkets are varieties that are optimized to survive transport and storage and are not harvested at peak ripeness.

But tomatoes from Spain and Morocco taste much better than those from Netherlands even if transport is significantly longer - how to explain it?

That's not my experience.

IME all store tomatoes taste bland because they were picked unripe for transport. That's why it's recommended to use canned tomatoes whenever you can, they are much tastier as they are picked at the right time and quickly canned.

I think it's the soil. My intuition is that Dutch tomatoes grow in hydroponics or a similar environment that is poor in minerals and other micronutrients. I am sure they could replicate the soil and flavor of an Italian tomato, but perhaps it would be too expensive to do so. But in the supermarket, the word "Dutch" on a tomato is a scarlet letter: I know I'm not going to buy it.

Mainly soil and the climate. I have imported soil and I get in my garten incredibly tasty tomatoes. Sun is sparse so they take longer to ripe but the taste is original.

It's the sun, which the tomatoes need. Additionally my guess is most of the tomatoes in the Netherlands are grown in greenhouses which are usually coated with UV protection, and the tomatoes do well with UV light.

I have tomatoes myself and this year they haven't tasted that great, and there's been a lot of rain and little sunshine compared to prior years. In the south of Europe you can grow the tomatoes outside although I think these days the commercial ones are also grown in e.g. polytunnels because they can get the products faster to the market.

>The imported junk we get from Netherlands is abysmal compared to anything grown locally

Considering how far north Netherlands is, and how gloomy the weather is, I'm not sure why anyone would think it's a good place to grow tomatoes. I thought Italy was the big tomato exporter in the EU.

Netherlands is one of the most agriculturally productive nations on the planet. They simply have the greenhouse industry, port and rail infrastructure to ship out what they grow very efficiently. You can get the best tomatoes in southern Europe but unless you turn that tomato sauce or can them it's going to waste. Tomatoes are some of the most difficult veg to ship. Ripening and transporting tomatoes is a tricky problem to get right.

>> we want the good stuff for ourselves, not the tourists

What does that mean, tourists steal your tomatoes at night?

It seems odd that a country with a temperate climate like Croatia would be importing produce from the Netherlands. Is this common?

Italian here. I agree that anything coming from NL is complete garbage.

I live in NL and I found out that the best bonding discussion topic between expats from the Mediterranean area is the nostalgy for flavorful tomatoes.

Agree in general, although cheese (Old Amsterdam) and flowers (tulips) are fine for their price.

Netherlands produce really edible tomatos, just your suplier buys D category produce instead of A, which is expensive. I'm surprised that Italy or Spain can't match (maybe because of price) on my supermarket shelf. I don't challenge homegrown tomato - they are superior! But you have to survive winter somehow.

Please forgive me to disagree wholeheartedly and completely. After several years of "let's check again if tomatoes from Netherlands are still bad" I have completely stopped buying them altogether. They look great, smell good, and taste absolutely bland.

Price does not make any distinction whatsoever, from my point of view. Or we only get the "cheap" stuff in all our shops here if the tomatoes are from Netherlands. And I do like to pay for good vegetables, esp. tomatoes (the ones I am buying are from Spain, locally grown or seldomly from the Balkans).

I would say the best cherry tomatoes from Netherlands are passable for cooking.

One note about the smell is that it could be just the green part where the fruit still is attached to, so it's easy to get deceived. Tomato plants have a strong smell themselves.

Sounds like you’re not in NL. I am, and for the past ten years or so new varieties of locally grown tomatoes have appeared that are markedly better. Not as good as fresh Puglian tomatoes during harvest season, but much, much better than the infamous water bombs the Netherlands is known for internationally.

Problem is, they’re somewhat expensive (or rather, not insanely cheap), and, likely for that reason, only available over locally. For some reason the rest of Europe insists on buying only the cheap flavorless water bombs.

You get what you pay for, I guess (said Puglian tomatoes, in season, aren’t cheap either).

> Netherlands produce really edible tomatos

I love how you use "edible" as a superlative to describe food. Yes, Dutch tomatoes are very edible indeed.

But where I can get some tasty and flavourful tomatoes?

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