When is a tomato not a tomato? However you pronounce it, not all tomatoes are created equal. And you should know the difference.

One of the things I love most about summer is the abundance of fresh, local tomatoes at the farmers market.

Real, imperfect, lumpy and certainly not the color of a shiny new fire engine.

Oh, and the taste, the taste of a real tomato fresh off the farm is delicious. I can just bite into one and let the juices drip down my chin, but my favorite way to eat them is sliced up with fresh cucumbers on a Slough Dough roll with lots of homemade mayonnaise and a pinch of sea salt. Preferably pink Himalayan salt ‘cause it just looks so pretty on tomatoes.

But tomato time is running out. Pretty soon the only tomatoes will be those sad, tasteless, little round balls that the supermarkets sell. And if you’ve ever wondered the why and how of bad tomatoes, you should read Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.

It’s like Zombieland for fruit. A real horror story that traces the origins of a simple fruit that became a tasteless staple of American plates and turned Florida into a slave state.

Here’s a taste:

“Perhaps our taste buds are trying to send us a message. Today's industrial tomatoes are as bereft of nutrition as they are of flavor. According to analyses conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fresh tomato today has 30 percent less vitamin C, 30 percent less thiamin, 19 percent less niacin, and 62 percent less calcium than it did in the 1960s.

"But the modern tomato does shame its 1960s counterpart in one area: It contains fourteen times as much sodium.”

Wow, no wonder store tomatoes taste so bad.

A Juicy Alternative

Tomatoland is a meaty read, and it should open your eyes about the tomato industry.

So this was what I was thinking when I wandered into Frank’s Chop House for lunch the other day and was greeted by a big basket of tomatoes sitting on the bar.

I’d forgotten about those tomatoes. I used to go to Frank’s in the summertime to eat just so I could pick up a few of those beauties. It’s $4 for a pound of juicy goodness. Frank Crapitto used to grow them up in Huntsville and use them in his sauces at Crapitto’s Cucina Italiana and in the salads at Frank’s. They were so good people kept asking to buy them so he’d bring in a basket or two of extras and sell them at the bar.

Now Crapitto sold Frank’s recently but by gosh those tomatoes were still there.

“I think it’s in the contract somewhere that we have to sell them every summer,” laughs Chris Shine who bought the restaurant with his father Michael Shine who runs Texas Food Group, a restaurant management and consulting service. Mike Shine also has a chuck wagon catering company, but that’s probably another story.

“I’ve known Frank for years,” Mike Shine says. “And I just really like this restaurant. I’d been asking him for two years to sell it to me.”

He finally did and father and son Shine took Frank’s over in early July. They’re making a few menu changes, adding some smaller offerings and a bar menu. Frank’s Big Frank, possibly the biggest hot dog in town, is off the menu. Mike Shine says there were only about five or six guys who ever ordered the foot-long dog, but he won’t mess with longtime favorites like the chicken fried steak.

His goal is to build up the luncheon business and create an afternoon bar biz.

Frankly, pun intended, Frank’s is a lovely dark wood space that is cool and comfy and would make a great River Oaks/Highland Village spot to grab a bar bite and a cocktail in the late afternoon. I’d go.

And as for Frank’s tomatoes?

You’ll continue to see baskets of the fruit goodies in the summertime on Frank’s bar.

Oh, but they’re not grown by Frank up in Huntsville anymore.

“Mike Atkinson grows them up at Atkinson Farms in Spring,” Chris Shine says. “But he got the seedlings from Frank, so they are the real thing.”