For ages, the debate has raged on whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. In the U.S., the Supreme Court ruled in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable because it is eaten as a part of meals. Meanwhile, the EU’s Court of Justice deemed tomatoes to be fruits because they can be made into jams.
And yet, I have to imagine that all the courts in the world would agree that whether fruit or vegetable, putting tomato in a dessert sounds kind of gross. That didn’t stop dessert store chain Qu’il Fait Bon from trying it though, as our writer Maro recently discovered.
She visited a Qu’il Fait Bon for the first time in a while because she knew they changed their lineup to use seasonal fruits in their tarts. She immediately saw that the large menu posted out front looked a little different, but nothing prepared her for just how drastic a change they’d made.
One of their new items that came out this month was the OSMIC Fruit Tomato 10 Tart for 799 yen a slice. OSMIC is a brand of tomatoes known for their exceptionally high sweetness. Current OSMIC tomatoes can go as high as 13 degrees Brix (Brix being the measurement for sugar content) which is in the neighborhood of a peach or strawberry, whereas an average tomato is around 7 degrees Brix.
In the case of this tart, the tomatoes used have a brix of 10, making them fairly sweeter than those normally sold in supermarkets, but even with that Maro wondered if they would work in a dessert.
Not wanting to pass up the chance to try it, she bought a slice to take home, but just before she did she spotted another oddity, Edamame Tart. Boiled soybeans don’t have the same fruit-vegetable mystique about them unless you count crude limericks about flatulence, so this tart was possibly even more surprising and she bought a slice of it too, also for 799 yen.
After getting home, Maro unboxed her tarts and took a piece of the tomato one first. From the moment it touched her tongue, she could tell this was an exquisite tomato and remarkably sweet. It had the sweetness of a dried tomato but with the juiciness of a fresh one.
The cream inside was rich like cream cheese and had a sourness that worked well with the incredible sweetness of the tomato. It tasted unlike any tart she had before and it had a very sophisticated feel to it. There was even tomato mixed into the crust, giving it a bold red color.
Next, it was time to try the Edamame Tart. In addition to having edamame on top, there was edamame mousse and edamame custard filling inside, ensuring a deep soybean flavor. After taking a bite Maro realized that this wasn’t nearly as strange as she expected, in fact, it was just like zunda, a sweet edamame paste that’s popular in the northeast part of Japan.
They were pretty ambitious dessert ingredients but Qu’il Fait Bon pulled them off perfectly. Also, even though this shop has locations all over Japan, the tomato tart is only available at the Grand Maison Ginza, Tokyo Skytree Town Solamachi, Tokyo Dome City, Shizuoka, and Hamamatsu stores. The Edamame Tart is even rarer and can only be bought in the Shizuoka store.
Qu’il Fait Bon has many other delicious offerings though, and it’s entirely possible they might have something different but equally daring in other locations too, so check it out if you can.
Related: Qu’il Fait Bon
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