Creole Tomato Festival Returns to the French Market

A Creole tomato—as you might have guessed from its name—is not just any tomato you might find in a grocery store’s produce aisle. Like many Louisiana staples, from our food to our music to our festivals, we do tomatoes just a little bit differently here.

In New Orleans, this distinction definitely applies to South Louisiana’s iconic Creole tomato, and also to the beloved festival that returns to the historic French Market June 10—11 to celebrate it. Held to mark the official opening of Creole tomato season each year since 1986, the 37^th annual Creole Tomato Festival delivers another bumper crop of Creole tomatoes to the country's oldest open-air marketplace for a weekend’s worth of memorable flavors, cooking demos, live music, artists’ booths, kids’ activities, and iconic Crescent City restaurants serving delicious dishes starring South Louisiana’s one-and-only Creole tomato. To find out what makes the Creole tomato so deliciously different, and to learn why every tomato lover will want to be at New Orleans French Market June 10—11, read on.

What’s In a Name?

A greenish-red skin color and broad, often irregular shape provide your first hint that the large, vine-ripened tomato you’re holding in your hands might be a Creole tomato. As home gardeners from Mandeville to Morgan City can attest, it’s entirely possible to grow a beautiful crop of home-grown tomatoes just about anywhere in Louisiana using “Creole tomato” seedlings sourced from the local nursery. But for a Creole tomato to be considered the real McCoy it must be grown south of New Orleans, in either St. Bernard or Plaquemines parishes, where the Mighty Mississippi deposits its cargo of fertile alluvial soil before eloping with the Gulf of Mexico. Ben Becnel Jr. is a sixth-generation farmer at the family-run Ben & Ben Becnel's Farmstand in Belle Chasse, LA. Famous for its Creole tomatoes, Becnel’s Farmstand has been supplying the Creole Tomato Festival for 20 years. Becnel explained that before the levee system was built, the annual Mississippi River spring flood deposited layer upon layer of rich alluvial soil—soil still making the farms and fields of Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes uniquely productive today. Becnel says that soil, and the semi-tropical coastal climate are key ingredients that make a Creole tomato grown in Plaquemines Parish taste like no other.

“It’s a more intense, stronger taste, and the flavor has more acid,” he said. “To me, it kind of has an earthy taste that you don't get from any other tomato.”

Call it Louisiana's “tomato terroir” if you like. Not only does the flavor of a Creole tomato differ from that of a regular tomato, the fertile soil and balmy temperatures of coastal Louisiana mean that Creole tomatoes enjoy an extra-long growing season, too. Becnel says that most years, he begins picking Creole tomatoes in mid-April and can continue harvesting throughout the year—sometimes until as late as January, in the years without an early frost or freeze.

With their distinctive appearance, unique flavor, and local origin, Creole tomatoes have become a prized staple of New Orleans’ culinary culture. So this summer, as you look forward to that first fabulous tomato sandwich or salad made with vine-ripened Creole tomatoes, be on the lookout for the earthy, sweet-yet-acidic flavor of a South Louisiana summertime. Because once you know what sets a Creole tomato apart, no other tomato will ever taste quite the same.

Find authentic fresh-picked Creole tomatoes at these local farm stands.