Skip to content

A town square for an unsquare town

redbankgreen

Standing for the vitality of Red Bank, its community, and the fun we have together.

RED BANK: TOMATOES, JUST OFF THE BOAT

dibartolo-500x356-3024272Jimmy DiBartolo gives PieHole a crash course in imported Italian tomatoes. (Photo by Jim Willis. Click to enlarge)

By JIM WILLIS

A few months from now in the fertile fields of Foggia, Italy, farmers will sow seeds for Roma plum tomatoes. Prized for its role in red sauce, this variety of tomato will mature and ripen under the warm Mediterranean sun. Come August, there will be an enormous crop of sweet, slightly acidic tomatoes with just a few seeds inside.

What’s got PieHole hot on the trail of these particular tomatoes is that if you’ve eaten red sauce or had pizza anywhere on The Green lately, there’s a very good chance that you’ve tasted these exact tomatoes from Foggia.

sauces-500x375-4126238PieHole‘s neighbor Melissa Bartolone cooked up a pair of sauces to compare San Marzano and standard-variety plums. (Photo by Melissa Bartolone.)

With some help from Jimmy DiBartolo, who owns Quick Stop Food & Paper, those tomatoes will be harvested at the end of the summer in Foggia, get canned near Naples, Italy and ultimately end up in his store on Newman Springs Road in Red Bank.

DiBartolo is going into his third year of supplying the area’s restaurants with this particular variety of tomatoes. We’re not going to name names here, but let’s say that according to DiBartolo, the list of Red Bank-area restaurants that buy his tomatoes is pretty comprehensive.

“Look,” says DiBartolo his hands dancing with his words, “I’ve been in the wholesale food business for 30 years. The key to every restaurant is their Italian tomato.”

DiBartolo tells PieHole that after years of opening cans of tomatoes and talking with his customers — chefs from some of New York and New Jersey’s big-name Italian restaurants — he knows a thing or two about tomatoes.

Foggia is nicknamed Tavoliere (think tavolo, or table) because it is a key agricultural region just north of the heel of Italy’s boot. DiBartolo, who visits the region each August to line up his supply of tomatoes, says the climate produces a slightly sweeter tomato that makes an exceptional sauce.

“If a good Italian handles these tomatoes, forget about it,” says DiBartolo.

But it’s not just where they’re grown that accounts for the flavor, says DiBartolo. Over the years he’s refined his canning process to include a porcelain-lined can that prevents the tomatoes from picking up the metallic taste that you can sometimes find in a canned tomato.

DiBartolo’s Quick Stop Food & Paper is a restaurant wholesaler, so we’re talking about jumbo-sized 88-ounce cans of tomatoes here. Roughly equal to just over three of the smaller, grocery-store sized cans of tomatoes. Still, at $3.95 for the 88-ounce can, it’s a considerable bargain if you’re making a Sunday sauce for your family or making some red sauce to freeze.

DiBartolo says that while the store typically caters to stores and restaurants, individual consumers come in to shop, too. “There are items shoppers can get here that they can’t get anywhere else,” says DiBartolo.

DiBartolo also imports San Marzano tomatoes (aka D.O.P tomatoes, for Denominazione d’ Origine Protetta, the Italian government organization that oversees the sale of this specific type of tomato).

The San Marzano, grown in soil that is rich with Mount Vesuvius’ volcanic ash, has a reputation for its bright flavor. DiBartolo’s are $6.95 for the 88-ounce can, and carry the D.O.P. stamp.

PieHole asked DiBartolo if he thought the San Marzanos were worth almost twice as much as the non-D.O.P. variety. Clearly proud of his canned tomatoes, he told PieHole he suspected that we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between his standard Romas and the San Marzano variety, and might even prefer his.

As a rule, PieHole does not wake up in the middle of the night pondering questions like “Are San Marzanos worth the extra money?” However this is exactly the kind of question that will leave us sitting at an intersection for an extra moment or two after the light turns green.

And so it was that we found ourselves at our kitchen counter with one can of each variety of DiBartolo’s tomatoes, carefully dividing them into containers that we would label as “Tomato A” and “Tomato B” and distribute to our neighbors for some good old-fashioned, blind taste-testing.

The Bartolones of Mori Place and Rossano family of Marion Street — both families have accomplished home cooks with Italian red sauce in their veins — volunteered their kitchens and palates.

Melissa Bartolone made a pair of identical marinara (quick cook) sauces and put them to her family for tasting.  Jenny and Alex Rossano made a pair of long-simmer sauces. Neither family could taste the difference between the San Marzanos and the standard variety. When pressed to choose, both slightly preferred DiBartolo’s standard variety tomato over the San Marzano.

So if you want to pay double, go ahead, because here’s the thing: whichever tomato you decide to buy, it’s going to mean spending some time at home cooking and thinking about your food and where it came from. And you can’t put a price on that.

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
redbankgreen Classics
Partyline
SO UNCOOL
One South Street resident awoke to a discarded kegerator at their curb on Friday morning. Video surveillance from nearby doorbell cameras co ...
FOLLOW THE BLACK LINE
Red Bankers who have been confused by the “not-so-permanent” bike lane that has lingered since last year’s Porchfest can r ...
SHROOMS ABLOOM
Shrooms on Irving Place. (photo by Partyline contributor Boris Kofman)  
El Camino y la Siesta
An early-arriving El Camino owner sneaks in a few winks as the annual Liberty Hose – Red Bank Firefighters’ Classic Car Show in memory o ...
RED BANKJ: JAZZ IN THE PARK BEGINS THURSDAY
Jazz in the Park kicks off tonight (Thursday) with The Grace Fox Big Band, an all-women 16-piece ensemble known for its bold original compos ...
LOST PARROT
This little blue beauty was found by a redbankgreen reporter Thursday boldly tempting fate by foraging on the ground on the turf of a pack o ...
ORANGE GLOW OVER RED BANK
A truly unbelievable post-storm sunset Tuesday (shot on Monmouth St. facing west). Photo by Partyline contributor Thomas Doremus.
BROAD STREET’S THIRSTY BLOOMS
Delfino, a worker with the company Terra Casa that manages the flower beds for the Red Bank special improvement district waters the flowers ...
PILGRIM BAPTIST MEN’S DAY CELEBRATION
  (photo by: Shanikquya Jackson) On Sunday, June 22, Pilgrim Baptist Church of Red Bank hosted its annual Men’s Day Celebration a ...
THREE GENERATION PROCLAMATION
Mayor Billy Portman presents the Borough of Red Bank’s Independence Day 2025 Proclamation to Arleen Brahn (second from right), grandmo ...
STEW THE BUTCHER COSPLAY
On the occasion of the retirement of Stewart Goldstein, longtime proprietor of Monmouth Meats, we thought it apt to present this photo from ...
NAVESINK FISHING
A kayak fisherman tries his luck under the NJ Transit train trestle across the Navesink River in Red Bank. (Photo by Partyline contributor A ...
RED BAKE
As the temperature hit 100 degrees Tuesday, Tom Sevison, Red Bank High School Class of 1973 and in town briefly on his way back home to Virg ...
JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION
Performers at Red Bank’s Juneteenth community celebration Sunday at Johnny Jazz Park. (photo by Brian Donohue)      
BUTTERFLIES LOVE THE WEED
Save the monarch, plant butterfly weed. (photo and text by Partyline contributor Roseann DalPra)  
LANTERNFLY PARTY
An invasive ailanthus tree sprouting in front of the US Post Office on Broad Street is covered with invasive spotted lantern fly nymphs Wedn ...
STREETCORNER SERENADE
An Irish doodle named Cheddar listens to native New Jerseyan, singer/songwriter and former Houston resident Tom Foti, (identified in the hea ...
Red Bank 5K Fun!!!
Red Bank Classic – June 14th, 2025 (photo by Partyline contributor Adam Kaplan)  
RAINBOW OVER RED BANK
Saturday, before and after the storm that rolled through town. (photo by Partyline contributor Thomas Doremus)    
Mini Ballers Bring the Heat at Fusion Basketball School
As the temperatures heat up, so does the competition in the mini baller clinic at Fusion School of Basketball. These little tykes are intens ...