By Chef Alexis Hernandez
The slice that starts it
The kitchen changes a little when the first tomato of the season hits the cutting board.
A serrated knife moves through the skin without much effort, and that smell comes up right away—green, a little sweet, unmistakably tomato.
After months of winter tomatoes that look fine and taste like nothing, the first real one always catches me off guard.
The juice gathers around the seeds. The cutting board gets wet. And that’s the moment summer starts to feel close enough to believe in.
I do not care where it came from. The garden, the farmers market, the grocery store.
If it tastes right, it wins.
What summer smells like
I have always been a Bloody Mary person. A little spice. Enough acid. Enough salt to make the whole thing wake up.
That may be part of why I wait for the first tomato the way I do.
The smell rises before I even take a bite. Green, tangy, a little heavy in the air.
It reminds me of the weather right before a Florida storm, when everything feels still for a second and then not still at all.
That first slice usually gets the chef treatment.
A little kosher salt.
Good olive oil.
Then maybe toasted bread, cheese, basil, a squeeze of lemon if it needs it.
That first tomato dinner was never planned.
It just kept happening until it became ours.
I did not always like them
I did not grow up loving tomatoes.
In my Cuban house they were sliced plain. No vinegar. No salt. Just red circles on a plate.
I did not get it.
The texture put me off first. Too slippery. Too many seeds. Too close to raw in a way I did not want.
So for years I liked tomatoes cooked down into sauce and left the fresh ones alone.
Then I was in Chicago, in my early twenties, out with friends when someone ordered heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella, basil, and balsamic.
I tried it mostly because I did not want to be difficult.
And that was that.
The tomato was uneven and a little ugly, but it tasted alive.
Bright.
Sharp.
Better than I expected it to be.
That was the bite that changed it for me.
Now I plant them myself
Now I have a garden plot in town. Twenty by thirty. Beets, peas, carrots, potatoes, and heirloom tomatoes.
It is not my first time growing things, but it still feels new every season.
You spend enough time in a garden and you stop expecting everything on your timeline.
You water.
You weed.
You wait.
Some things come up fast. Some take their time. Some make you think nothing is happening until one day there it is.
Tomatoes are like that.
And when that first tomato of the season finally ripens, it does not need to be perfect. It just needs to taste like a tomato.
That is enough.
What the first tomato of the season reminds me
The first tomato of the season does not taste better because it is rare.
It tastes better because I missed it.
Because I know the difference now between a tomato that is there to fill space and one that actually has something to say.
Where it ends up
By summer I will probably be in Key West again, carrying a sandwich down toward the beach.
Toasted bread, bacon, lettuce, pesto, and an heirloom tomato from Fausto’s.
I will sit down near the water and take the first bite before I even get settled.
And I will probably think the same thing I think every year.
Glad you’re back.
Not summer.
The tomato.
