50 new york | august 5–18, 2019
PHOTOGRAPH:STELLA
BLACKMON/NEW
YORK
MAGAZINE
(STRAWBERRIES)
foodtrendletItaly’s SecretPizza ComesOut of Hiding
A hyperregional flatbread from Liguria
is on the rise in New York.at the greenmarketThe Plight of the TristarIs New York’s preeminent strawberry going
the way of the woolly mammoth?Photograph by Joe Lingeman
most local strawberry connoisseurs are famil-
iar with the Tristar, Greenmarket’s small, sweet answer
to the supermarket’s transcontinental behemoths. But
few are aware of the behind-the-scenes drama that has
put the future of this superfruit in jeopardy. The David
in this tale is Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry
Farm, who in 1985 crashed the Union Square farmers’
market with his Cornell University roommate Gerald
Posner and a pickup truck full of Tristars and has been
selling them to besotted chefs and finicky New Yorkers
ever since. Goliath would be Planasa, the multinational horticultural corporation
that in 2017 acquired Norcal, the California nursery that supplies Bishop’s virus-
free bare-root plants, the raw material of commercial berry farming, and dropped
Tristars from its product roster this past March.
To grasp the magnitude of this business decision, one must first appreciate
the outsize position the tiny Tristar occupies in the greater metropolitan area’s
local-and-seasonal-produce hierarchy. It is everything the mainstream speci-
men is not: diminutive, aromatic, sweet through and through. But also: low-
yield, too delicate to transport great distances, and labor-intensive, both to grow
and to pick. These downsides have understandably prevented Tristars from
being widely propagated by the large nurseries that supply Bishop and his fellow
Greenmarket purveyors Berried Treasures and Fantasy Fruit with their first-
generation plant stock. And so the news from Norcal earlier this year spelled
imminent doom—not only because Tristar sales represent 80 percent of Bish-
op’s annual revenue but because his clientele has come to associate small straw-
berries with big flavor. “I feel like I’m pigeonholed,” he says. “They all say, ‘Give
me the little ones.’ ” As a contingency plan, he stockpiled as many remaining
plants as he could, as well as Tributes, another, slightly larger day-neutral vari-
ety, also canceled by Planasa, and put in 10,000 plants of the well-regarded
Fr ench berry Mara des Bois. But neither has won over Tristar superfans: The
Tributes are more watery, the Mara des Bois less dense. “The chefs haven’t really
responded to them,” says Bishop.
Desperate to find a new source, the farmer went down the list of national
nurseries from Cornell’s ag department, trying to sweet-talk any of them into
planting a crop that will never earn them as much per acre as more vigorous
varieties. Finally, one of Bishop’s cold calls connected him with Pat Coash of
Koppes Plants in Watsonville. After first turning him down, Coash called back
and agreed to devote a corner of a field to Tristars, provided Bishop send him
18,000 plants immediately. “I can do a better job than Norcal,” Coash told
Bishop, suggesting that the fate of New York’s tiny-berry supply and our best
pastry chefs’ dessert menus may very well rest on the competitive impulses of
rival California plant nurseries.
To hedge his bets, Bishop has built a small nursery on his own Roscoe farm,
which won’t bear fruit until 2021, and he won’t receive plants from Koppes until
next year. But for now, he says, he’s “swimming in strawberries,” a silver lining for
the greater Tristar-popping population. One such devotee is Superiority Burger’s
Brooks Headley, who uses them in salads and sorbets. “Yes, they are a pain to prep,
and the yield is pretty low,” he says. “But I don’t care. The flavor is quite simply the
best. They feel very New York City to me. If they are gone? It will definitely be an
intense mourning period. I’m not willing to accept it. Especially if it’s corporate
America killing off another inefficient yet totally beautiful thing.” r.r. & r.p.just when you thought you knew
all there is to know about the current
craze for focaccia and its pizzalike
variants, along comes focaccia col formaggio di
Recco (focaccia di Recco for short; FDR for
shortest): a bubbly ooze of tart and fruity strac-
chino cheese barely contained by two supersize
rounds of paper-thin dough. Mere mention
of FDR and its holy grail, the 134-year-old
Manuelina, a restaurant in the Ligurian town of
Recco, can cause otherwise jaded gastronomes
to lose their minds. Italian-food expert Fred
Plotkin has described it as “probably the most
addictive food on the planet.” And Vogue’s
Jeffrey Steingarten wrote 2,500 words on the
subject detailing his hunt for the recipe while
extolling the dish as combining the crispness of
a potato chip with the succulence of a grilled
cheese sandwich.
What’s funny about FDR is that, despite the
name, it looks about as much like an ordinary
focaccia as Christian Bale minus a fat suit
and 15 hours of work in the makeup artist’s
chair looks like Dick Cheney. Maybe the
nomenclature is part of the reason why FDR has
never taken off in New York and also why one
of the best and most popular versions of the dish
goes under the alias of “stuffed garlic bread” at
Don Angie in the West Village.
The good news is that there’s a mini-flurry of
activity on the local FDR front. At Kestè Fulton
in Fidi, Neapolitan-pizza master Roberto
Caporuscio just added a first-rate version to his
menu. It comes with Wisconsin crescenza
cheese (stracchino by another name) and in
a range of sizes including a traditional 25-inch
model by special order.
Even more exciting is the news that the
restaurateur Shelly Fireman, whose enthusiasm
for thin focaccia stuffed with stracchino cheese
is almost Plotkinian, is back in the FDR business.
A dozen or so years ago, Fireman traveled to
Manuelina and was so smitten by the signature
dish that he hired the restaurant’s No. 1 FDR guy
on the spot and set up the focacciaiolo and his
Maremma sheepdog in an apartment in Queens.
The plan was for him to honcho FDR production
at Fireman’s restaurant Bond 45 in the Theater
District. Alas, the cook and his dog grew home-
sick for Liguria and headed back to Recco after
only three weeks of city life. Fireman never lost
his taste for FDR, though. When he reopened his
Redeye Grill on Seventh Avenue in July, the dish
was on the menu of its new casual lounge area,
888 Café. This FDR is as it should be: light, crisp,
baked in the traditional copper pans, and sliced
checkerboard style. It may not be the most
addictive food on the planet, but for a wide swath
of Midtown West, it is a contender.
r.r. & r.p.ADVANCED FORMTRANSMITTED
________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICAD1619STR_Food34_lay [Print]_35541813.indd 50 7/31/19 4:05 PM50 newyork| august5–18, 2019
PHOTOGRAPH:STELLABLACKMON/NEWYORKMAGAZINE(STRAWBERRIES)foodtrendletItaly’s SecretPizza ComesOut of Hiding
A hyperregional flatbread from Liguria
is on the rise in New York.at the greenmarketThe Plight of the TristarIs New York’s preeminent strawberry going
the way of the woolly mammoth?PhotographbyJoeLingemanmost local strawberry connoisseurs are famil-
iar with the Tristar, Greenmarket’s small, sweet answer
to the supermarket’s transcontinental behemoths. But
few are aware of the behind-the-scenes drama that has
put the future of this superfruit in jeopardy. The David
in this tale is Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry
Farm, who in 1985 crashed the Union Square farmers’
market with his Cornell University roommate Gerald
Posner and a pickup truck full of Tristars and has been
selling them to besotted chefs and finicky New Yorkers
ever since. Goliath would be Planasa, the multinational horticultural corporation
that in 2017 acquired Norcal, the California nursery that supplies Bishop’s virus-
free bare-root plants, the raw material of commercial berry farming, and dropped
Tristarsfromits product roster this past March.
Tograspthe magnitude of this business decision, one must first appreciate
theoutsizeposition the tiny Tristar occupies in the greater metropolitan area’s
local-and-seasonal-produce hierarchy. It is everything the mainstream speci-
menis not:diminutive, aromatic, sweet through and through. But also: low-
yield,toodelicate to transport great distances, and labor-intensive, both to grow
andtopick.These downsides have understandably prevented Tristars from
beingwidelypropagated by the large nurseries that supply Bishop and his fellow
Greenmarket purveyors Berried Treasures and Fantasy Fruit with their first-
generationplant stock. And so the news from Norcal earlier this year spelled
imminent doom—not only because Tristar sales represent 80 percent of Bish-
op’s annual revenue but because his clientele has come to associate small straw-
berries with big flavor. “I feel like I’m pigeonholed,” he says. “They all say, ‘Give
me the little ones.’ ” As a contingency plan, he stockpiled as many remaining
plants as he could, as well as Tributes, another, slightly larger day-neutral vari-
ety, also canceled by Planasa, and put in 10,000 plants of the well-regarded
Fr ench berry Mara des Bois. But neither has won over Tristar superfans: The
Tributes are more watery, the Mara des Bois less dense. “The chefs haven’t really
responded to them,” says Bishop.
Desperate to find a new source, the farmer went down the list of national
nurseries from Cornell’s ag department, trying to sweet-talk any of them into
planting a crop that will never earn them as much per acre as more vigorous
varieties. Finally, one of Bishop’s cold calls connected him with Pat Coash of
Koppes Plants in Watsonville. After first turning him down, Coash called back
and agreed to devote a corner of a field to Tristars, provided Bishop send him
18,000 plants immediately. “I can do a better job than Norcal,” Coash told
Bishop, suggesting that the fate of New York’s tiny-berry supply and our best
pastry chefs’ dessert menus may very well rest on the competitive impulses of
rival California plant nurseries.
To hedge his bets, Bishop has built a small nursery on his own Roscoe farm,
which won’t bear fruit until 2021, and he won’t receive plants from Koppes until
next year. But for now, he says, he’s “swimming in strawberries,” a silver lining for
the greater Tristar-popping population. One such devotee is Superiority Burger’s
Brooks Headley, who uses them in salads and sorbets. “Yes, they are a pain to prep,
and the yield is pretty low,” he says. “But I don’t care. The flavor is quite simply the
best. They fe Ci e. If they are go ill definitely be an
intense mou n ng to accept it. ally if it’s corporate
America killing off another inefficient yet totally beautiful thing.” r.r. & r.p.just when you thought you knew
all there is to know about the current
craze for focaccia and its pizzalike
variants, along comes focaccia col formaggio di
Recco (focaccia di Recco for short; FDR for
shortest): a bubbly ooze of tart and fruity strac-
chino cheese barely contained by two supersize
rounds of paper-thin dough. Mere mention
of FDR and its holy grail, the 134-year-old
Manuelina, a restaurant in the Ligurian town of
Recco, can cause otherwise jaded gastronomes
to lose their minds. Italian-food expert Fred
Plotkin has described it as “probably the most
addictive food on the planet.” And Vogue’s
Jeffrey Steingarten wrote 2,500 words on the
subject detailing his hunt for the recipe while
extolling the dish as combining the crispness of
a potato chip with the succulence of a grilled
cheese sandwich.
What’s funny about FDR is that, despite the
name, it looks about as much like an ordinary
focaccia as Christian Bale minus a fat suit
and 15 hours of work in the makeup artist’s
chair looks like Dick Cheney. Maybe the
nomenclature is part of the reason why FDR has
never taken off in New York and also why one
of the best and most popular versions of the dish
goes under the alias of “stuffed garlic bread” at
Don Angie in the West Village.
The good news is that there’s a mini-flurry of
activity on the local FDR front. At Kestè Fulton
in Fidi, Neapolitan-pizza master Roberto
Caporuscio just added a first-rate version to his
menu. It comes with Wisconsin crescenza
cheese (stracchino by another name) and in
a range of sizes including a traditional 25-inch
model by special order.
Even more exciting is the news that the
restaurateur Shelly Fireman, whose enthusiasm
for thin focaccia stuffed with stracchino cheese
is almost Plotkinian, is back in the FDR business.
A dozen or so years ago, Fireman traveled to
Manuelina and was so smitten by the signature
dish that he hired the restaurant’s No. 1 FDR guy
on the spot and set up the focacciaiolo and his
Maremma sheepdog in an apartment in Queens.
The plan was for him to honcho FDR production
at Fireman’s restaurant Bond 45 in the Theater
District. Alas, the cook and his dog grew home-
sick for Liguria and headed back to Recco after
only three weeks of city life. Fireman never lost
his taste for FDR, though. When he reopened his
Redeye Grill on Seventh Avenue in July, the dish
was on the menu of its new casual lounge area,
888 Café. This FDR is as it should be: light, crisp,
baked in the traditional copper pans, and sliced
checkerboard style. It may not be the most
addictive food on the planet, but for a wide swath
of Midtown West, it is a contender.
r.r. & r.p.