At this time of year, tomatoes are not too hard, not too soft — at peak ripeness. For the Nob Hill wine bar El Lopo, this Goldilocks period is celebrated with 30 pounds of tomatoes and a crowd of people ready to get messy.
For the second consecutive year, El Lopo has brought a taste of Spain to San Francisco with its very own Tomatopia, inspired by La Tomatina, held annually in the city of Buñol. Though the Spanish festival has drawn more than 40,000 people, compared with El Lopo’s 10, participants in Thursday evening’s Tomatopia say they had just as much fun.
Max Bamsey, a regular at El Lopo and friend of owner Daniel Azarkman, said he’d been excited for Tomatopia after missing last year’s inaugural festivities.
“I thought about different experiences in my life, and I was like, ‘Well, I’ve never been covered in tomato juice and seeds, so I can mark that off my list,’” Bamsey said. “Skydiving? No. Covered in tomato juice? Yes!”
Olivia Gregory also made a dent in her bucket list. She always wanted to go to La Tomatina, so she was excited to win a ticket — they cost $20 — to San Francisco’s scaled-down version after placing in El Lopo’s tomato-themed trivia competition this week.
The fight began a bit awkwardly, she said, with no one knowing exactly how to start. But once the first tomato was thrown, all hell broke loose.
“When people start leaning into it, that’s when it got really fun,” Gregory said.
And lean in they did. After just a few minutes, Azarkman went inside the bar to grab another bucket of tomatoes.
Azarkman said the idea came after last year’s especially late tomato season. Customers expect tomato toast from Spanish restaurants, so when the fruit was finally in season, Azarkman wanted to celebrate.
“[Tomatopia] was almost like a ‘Finally, your tomato toast is here!’ party,” he said.
Chef Wyatt Sandberg purchases the tomatoes at Heart of the City Farmers Market at Fulton Plaza, a 20-minute walk from El Lopo. Most of the produce goes toward the bar’s wide array of tomato-based dishes, including bread pudding with tomato-butter cream, cocktails, and of course, the toast.
The overripe ones are saved for Tomatopia.
Just like the locally sourced tomatoes, many participants live nearby and are regulars at the bar.
Shikha Srinivas, Surabhi Mundada, and Roshini Ravi saw advertisements for the tomato-pelting during a joint birthday party at El Lopo. They were immediately reminded of the Bollywood movie “Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara,” which features a scene at La Tomatina.
That movie, plus childhood food-fight dreams, inspired them to join Tomatopia. Ravi’s favorite part, though, was meeting other people willing to soil an outfit with red-orange acidic fruit juice.
“Meeting people who are game enough to do this, I feel like we’re around good company,” she said. “[I love] being a part of the silly things that happen in San Francisco.”