The WOW Factor

With the help of a local tomato farm, the Four SeasonsResort Hualālai is serving up the splendor of Hawai‘i.

BY JACKIE CARADONIO

Mike Hodson didn’t like tomatoes when he first began growing them in 2006. They had no flavor, he thought, and the jelly in the middle wasn’t appetizing at all. But that’s exactly why he decided to farm them. “I wanted to grow a tomato I would actually want to eat—something full of meat, delicious, and sweet,” he says.

Hodson had just retired from a career on the Big Island’s police force, and he was ready to embark on a new profession—one that would be more peaceful, but no less interesting. Tomato farming appealed to the native Hawaiian for the unique challenges it posed.

“Not a lot of people grow tomatoes because they are one of the hardest crops to grow,” he says. “I figured if I mastered them, I could farm almost anything.” Adding to the complexity of growing tomatoes was Hodson’s determination to have an entirely organic farming process. (“I survived almost three decades in the police department, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t kill myself with pesticides,” he recalls.) That resolve saw Hodson through more trial and error than most farmers might have survived. More than once, he lost everything and had to start again from scratch. But he persisted, and five years later, his little operation had grown from one greenhouse to 30.

Also growing was his reputation as the island’s best tomato farmer—and it wasn’t long before the Four Seasons Resort Hualālai came knocking. The resort’s then executive chef, James Babian, discovered Hodson’s delicious red Romas and black beauties at a farmers market and immediately approached the former cop to engineer the most flavorful tomato possible. It took four more years of adding and taking away from the soil, tinkering bit by bit with the balance of nutrients and tasting the fruits that it yielded over and over again until they reached their goal: the perfect tomato.

Today, Hodson is Hawai‘i’s king of tomatoes. With 48 greenhouses on 10 acres in Waimea, his Wow Farm—named for the reaction that his heirlooms commonly elicit from first-time tasters—has an island-wide reputation. And the restaurants at the nearby Four Seasons (executive chef Thomas Bellec leads the culinary team, and Edward Higgins is chef de cuisine of Hualālai’s Beach Tree restaurant) are among a handful of places on the island where you can bite into the farm’s sweet and fragrant fruits—the shining stars of dishes like the Wow Tomato Caprese salad (see recipe, page 15) at the Beach Tree.

No doubt, flavor comes first, but for the chefs the process behind Hodson’s tomatoes is just as important. “Wow Farm is taking care of their land, making sure that it’s living, breathing soil instead of farming the hell out of it,” says Higgins. “They don’t overproduce, and they only pick when it’s appropriate. Bigger facilities pick for transport, but these guys pick the tomatoes when they’re good and ready, and 20 minutes later, they’re in my kitchen.”

Of course, such careful timing comes with its own challenges, chief among them being supply. Hodson and his team, which includes his wife, Tricia, and son Michael Jr., never pick an unripe tomato to fulfill an order. That means on occasion Higgins’s kitchen might come up short. “Ultimately the tomatoes are in charge, and if they’re not ready, then they’re not ready,” he says. “It can be frustrating, but we learned the hard way that other productions—mainland farms especially—would sooner give you 20 cases of garbage than not fill your order. That’s how you end up with subpar ingredients, and that’s not something we’re interested in doing.”

That hyper-local commitment is ultimately what drives Higgins and Bellec at their restaurants. The Four Seasons Resort Hualālai supports more than 160 local farmers and fishermen, and roughly 90 percent of its menu items come from the Hawaiian Islands. Most items, from the eggs to the carrots and the radishes, are sourced nearby. The greens come from Kekela Farms in Waimea; even the sorbet is locally made in Waimea. To support developing farms without depleting their supply, the chefs also work with local co-ops to source additional ingredients in smaller proportions. “We’re trying to showcase the locale and really allow the location to dictate what happens on the menus,” says Higgins.

Most of the menu items at the Four Seasons Resort Hualālai come from the Hawaiian Islands.

WOW TOMATO CAPRESE SALAD

Courtesy of the chefs at the Four Seasons Resort Hualālai’s Beach Treerestaurant, whose dish features top tomatoes from nearby Wow Farm

Ingredients

2 yellow beefsteak tomatoes

2 Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes or similar

4 tbsp. balsamic vinegar reduction

1/2 bunch of basil, plus 1/4 cup of leaves for garnish

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil10 oz. mozzarella di bufala

Kona sea salt (or any high-quality sea salt)

Directions: Select the tomatoes The base of this recipe—the tomato—is its shining star. When selecting your tomatoes, make sure that they are supple and heavy in the hand (unripe tomatoes are hard and light). Also, smell them, particularly around the stem. They will have a sweet, earthy smell when ripe.

Make the balsamic vinegar reduction: Pour balsamic vinegar into a small saucepan and cook over medium low heat until the vinegar has reduced to at least half of the original amount (roughly 30 minutes for two cups of vinegar to reduce to one cup).

Prepare the dish: Toss the fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil in a Vitamix blender and mix on high power until pureed. Cut the tomatoes and the mozzarella into wedges. Arrange the tomatoes and mozzarella alternately down the center of a plate. Dot the basil puree around the plate, drizzle the reduction over the top, and finish with sea salt to taste. Tear the reserved basil leaves and scatter over the top to garnish.

Chef de Cuisine Edward Higgins prepares the Beach Tree restaurant's caprese salad, which features tomatoes from Waimea’s Wow Farm.