In the heart of New York, at the Armani Restaurant on Fifth Avenue, the Italian tomato had its evening. This is where ANICAV, the National Association of Vegetal Food Reserves, presented the new Greatest Tomatoes from Europe campaign, co-funded by the European Union under the Enjoy It’s from Europe program and dedicated to the US market.
To do the honors of the house was Giovanni De Angelis, general manager of ANICAV, who chose to speak in Italian for a precise reason. “The tomato, in the United States and around the world, speaks Italian,” he said. ANICAV, he explained, gathers over one hundred companies and is the largest tomato association in the world by number of companies. Italy is the second world transformer after the United States and before China, with an important share of world transformation and more than half of the European one. A sector that generates more than five and a half billion euros of turnover, of which more than half from export.
“The tomato is simply one of the true symbols of Italian food, Made in Italy in the world,” said De Angelis. The United States, he added, is a market that ANICAV knows well and in which he believes deeply: in 2025 the European export of tomato preserves to the USA has exceeded the two hundred million dollars, which become four hundred considering also ready sauces, for about one hundred and sixty thousand tons of product.
De Angelis has not concealed the difficulties of recent times, with a decline in export linked also to the impact of new duties, an extra reason, has observed, in order to continue investing in the promotion and the story of quality. A quality that, he explained, begins in the fields, with farmers who cultivate the raw material with respect for the land, and continues in the hands of those who transform it, preserving in every season and in every corner of the world the same taste of a freshly harvested tomato. “It is also a story of sustainability, of traceability from the field to the table”, he added.
In the next three years the campaign will bring Greatest Tomatoes from Europe to three of the most influential American cities, starting from New York, then continuing to Chicago and Los Angeles, with press events, fairs, education tours, tastings and a strong presence on social media. Manuela Barzan, coordinator of the project, illustrated the future stages.
Among the institutional guests, the evening saw the presence of the Consul General Aggiunta d’Italia in New York, Laura Pirino, who brought the support of the institutions to a project of promotion of the best of Italian production. “Italian cuisine is not only food and ingredients, it is the excellence of a local production that has much to do with a healthy lifestyle and culture,” he said. De Angelis also thanked the Foreign Minister, Nicola Caputo.
The evening closed with a dinner entirely designed around the tomato, at the Armani Restaurant. From aperitif to dessert, the ingredient has returned in every flow, from risotto to tomato with fresh scamorza to glazed branzino, to a meringue with tomato powder. A way to demonstrate, at the table, how Italian tomato, from a simple ingredient, can become the protagonist of an entire story made of territory, work and quality. The same thing that, from New York, aims to conquer even more American tables.
L’articolo Italian tomato is presented in New York, at the restaurant Armani proviene da IlNewyorkese.
