Can a tomato be a bell pepper? Yes, says Frieda Caplan, who's promoting this exotic hybrid. (By the way, she's the lady who introduced kiwi fruit to America), reports Martha McNeil Hamilton

Haven't heard of the toma bella yet?

If Frieda Caplan is right, the hybrid with the texture of a bell pepper and the taste of a tomato should be coming soon to hot restaurants, organic food stands, fancy grocers and farmers' markets near you.

Frieda, founder of the Los Alamitos, California, USA, speciality produce distributor Frieda's Inc., began promoting the toma bella in July this year, sending out samples for buyers to taste, e-mailing chefs and contacting food writers, describing its "intense red colour" and surprising flavour.

If the effort succeeds, it will create the kind of buzz that catches the attention of people like Chris Fullerton, manager of the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative, which supplies restaurants, stores and farmers markets in the Washington area and Pennsylvania.

Both are links in the chain that brings must-have new food items from the farm to the foodie's dining-room table. Frieda's does it through out the U.S., supplying chains "that like to be first to market", such as Central Markets and Whole Foods, according to Tristan Millar, director of marketing and business development.

The Tuscarora co-op does it locally. Owned and directed by growers, the distribution co-op was founded in 1988 and has 19 members who work with a handful of other growers - trying to keep up with the demands of professional and home chefs for items such as fava beans, squash blossoms and microgreens.

Although the demand for more exotic fruits and vegetables is relatively small, the profit margins on fancy produce tend to be higher, and more and more players are vying for the market.

The toma bella, a trademark registered by Frieda's, is one of the latest in a line of exotic fruits and vegetables designed to appeal to the adventurous palate and win a permanent spot in the American produce Hall of Fame. According to Frieda, it combines a "sweet, tomato flavour with the crispy, crunchiness of bell pepper... even after it's cooked".

Before you raise your eyebrows in scepticism, you should know that Frieda introduced a once little-known fruit called the Chinese gooseberry to U.S. markets, changed its name to kiwi fruit and is widely credited with helping to create its huge success.

Back then, celebrity chefs and adventurous home cooks embraced it. Eventually, though the kiwi never became a huge seller, it settled in, becoming commonplace in the nation's grocery stores. "It was chic. The White House or people like that would use the kiwi" during the 1980s, says Stan Steppa, president of Magruder's Inc. "It's an ordinary piece of fruit now."

Many trends have come and gone since the kiwi, Millar says. Some, like jicama, have become mainstream. Others, such as the star fruit, haven't found a broader market.

Often what seems like an overnight trend can be a long time in the making, Millar says. For instance, Frieda brought the first kiwi fruit into the United States in the 1960s (when she met a customs official who said she would never be able to sell it unless she changed the product's name), but it didn't take off until many years later.

In 1986, the company trademarked the name Donut Peach for a sweet, small peach that has only become really popular in the past three years, Millar says. Frieda's first heard of the toma bella a few years ago when a Japanese investor tried to interest the company in it.

Although Frieda's declined, a grower in Baja California, Mexico, produced a crop that Frieda's ended up selling to one of its grocer customers. It was tasty, but at the time Frieda's wasn't in the market for a new item to introduce, Millar says.

Earlier this year a seed source approached Frieda's with what appeared to be the same product. Frieda's found growers in California and Michigan, provided them with seeds, and began the launch.

Like the marketers at Frieda's, Fullerton, says he spends a lot of time listening to customers and scanning the food press to figure out in advance what is going to be in demand in a given season, but it's still a dicey business. "A lot of times the chef who was very enthusiastic about something might have moved on to another product" by the time the crop comes in, he says.

"You can't just go to a meeting and say, 'A couple of chefs have asked for microgreens - why doesn't somebody try them?' and have everybody or nobody trying them".

This year fava beans have been hot and so have microgreens, seedlings so tiny they make mesclun look mammoth. But although Fullerton keeps an eye on trends, he doesn't think of produce in those terms: "I just don't like that label. It's too ephemeral."

Fullerton notes that in the past, people grew more varieties of vegetables than are typically available in supermarkets. "What I'm seeing is people rediscovering the variety that can exist in fruits and vegetables."

Customers can't get enough heirloom tomatoes - older varieties that come in an array of shapes and colours, according to Fullerton and Magruder's Steppa.

But for other produce, variety alone may not be enough. Consumers didn't start buying more eggplants, even when Tuscarora's growers offered them in green, orange and white and in different shapes. "We thought that if we had a huge diversity of eggplants, people would get excited about that," Fullerton says, "but that never seemed to happen."

By Martha McNeil Hamilton

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