Tomato Test: Expert Reveals Pitfalls of Super-Expensive Tomatoes

In fact, if you're not into cooking, it's hard to even grasp the problem at first glance. Why, for example, can a "senior tomato" cost both 100 and 1,000 rubles per kilogram on the same day? After all, any botanist will tell you: it's a common herbaceous plant of the nightshade family. From an economic standpoint, it's a vegetable, while the fruit is a berry. It's widely used in everything from juice to salads, from soup to side dishes, fresh, salted, and dried...

But of course, only laymen think this way. Plebeians, so to speak, with unrefined taste. And those who love tomatoes (eating them, we should clarify, just in case!) can give a whole lecture on them. Any "tomatophile" will tell you that the main problem is finding good tomatoes with a rich flavor, not "plastic" ones. Those who live in the south are especially picky, where this vegetable grows not like ours, capriciously and in greenhouses, but directly in the ground, under the open sun.

For example, any Turk will confirm: a winter greenhouse tomato is not the same as a summer one. And a resident of Rostov or Makhachkala will add: you should buy tomatoes "by smell"—those that don't smell or taste good are a waste of money.

So, these "ground" ones—from the south, straight from the garden, with their mind-blowing aroma—will cost a thousand, while the incubator-grown, greenhouse ones will cost ten times less. Right? Not quite. This is where the status game begins.

To eat or to admire

Grocery shoppers are famously divided into market lovers and supermarket aficionados. Both offer cheap and cheerful options, as well as expensive and glamorous ones. It all comes down to socializing: the market is good for extroverts, while more reserved ones prefer the store.

It's like this with Moscow markets: if you want something expensive and luxurious, go to Dorogomilovsky. There, it's "up to a thousand"; okay, maybe 900 "like a dear guest." For this luxury price, you'll get produce from Uzbekistan—calibrated to size, tomato for tomato. The taste, of course, as they say, is finger-licking good. Well... Maybe. We'll take your word for it!

The same "luxury tomatoes," but at Moskvoretsky—a more affordable but still fashionable market—for 700 rubles. "Just good ones, for pickling, were 300; and really 'technical' plum tomatoes could be had for 100 rubles," market visitors say of prices at the end of October. Loose cherry tomatoes are about the same, around a hundred per kilo—a sure bet, needless to say.

Can you get it cheaper? Of course! But again, you need to know the location. Take, for example, Preobrazhensky Market. There are no tomatoes here for more than 500 rubles a kilo. And the most noticeable ones aren't even the most expensive ones, but the ones for 250. From Dagestan. The shapes—the great "vegetable painter" Arcimboldo would have fainted, and art schools should be stocking up on them for their still-life collections. Each tomato has its own "face." And there's a color to suit every taste—from white and greenish to brown and purple.

"This season is over for us, the bushes themselves have been pulled out, and all the tomatoes that were left are for sale; there won't be any more in the ground this season," explains a woman who seems to be a fellow tomato grower.

It's quite likely, by the way: it's precisely these "village" ground-grown tomatoes that have such a dashing, irregular appearance. The smell is amazing. And the taste... No, not "honey-sugar" like the super-expensive varieties. It has a sour, greenish flavor. But, generally speaking, this doesn't spoil the tomatoes at all.

"Are you going to eat them or admire them?" the saleswoman asks. "I'll charge a hundred rubles for a photo!" And she laughs. Well, what can you say? We'll eat them and admire them.

And most importantly, there's complete clarity of status: for the high life, you need to go to Dorogomilovsky, while modern gourmets choose Moskvoretsky. Preobrazhensky, then, is a "hidden" place for those in the know. And for those living in the northern part of the city, otherwise, traveling from somewhere like Chertanovo is inconvenient.

Product on the shelf

At a well-known supermarket chain, we counted 14 types of packaged tomatoes and five sold by weight. The highest price, 339.99 rubles, was marked on "pink tomatoes, Azerbaijan." A young woman approached the crates of tomatoes and started sniffing them. "But they don't smell like anything," I couldn't help but ask. "How do you even choose tomatoes here?" "Well, actually, the Azerbaijani ones have always been the best."

Well, think about it... However, vegetables at the store have this wonderful thing called packaging: it actually tells you everything about where it's from. In the end, the "Baku" tomatoes I chose turned out to be produced in... Elektrostal. Greenhouse, I suppose. But they're perfectly edible!

And it seems there's no room here for a vanity fair over which tomato is the best. But there is: it all depends on the store you shop at. It's one thing to go to a premium store with those twenty or more varieties. It's quite another to go to a budget chain grocery store with a couple of cherry tomatoes, one cream, and, if you're lucky, the downright tasteless "beef heart." But then again, you're unlikely to find tomatoes over 350 rubles there either. It's a similar story with other vegetables.

Eat it, it's cheaper

For clarification on the current state of the tomato market, MK correspondents contacted Svetlana Ilyashenko, Associate Professor of the Trade Policy Department at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. It turned out that the price of this product depends on several factors: production costs, transportation costs, and the market situation.

Thus, according to Rosstat, the price of a kilogram of tomatoes reached 768 rubles by the end of October. In Chukotka, 225 rubles and 228 rubles in St. Petersburg and Moscow, respectively, 199 rubles in Krasnodar Krai, and 119 rubles in the Republic of Dagestan. It's immediately clear where the vegetable grows and where it needs to be transported by plane.

"Furthermore, tomatoes are a product with a distinctly seasonal price pattern," says Ilyashenko. "Prices peak in the winter and spring, as the market supply of domestic produce is minimal, and the imported and greenhouse tomatoes that are available are more expensive to produce. In the summer, retail prices reach their lowest in July and August, when the mass harvest of field-grown tomatoes in Russia occurs and market supply is at its highest."

So, we're at the very end of the field-grown tomato season, and soon the market will be dominated by more expensive greenhouse produce, and this will continue until spring. Prices will, of course, begin to rise. Since the beginning of September 2025, tomatoes have risen in price by an average of 43.3% across Russia (from 134 rubles to 192 rubles per kg) and 42.5% in Moscow (from 160 rubles to 228 rubles per kg).

And the most interesting thing: the taste of vegetables doesn't depend on their price. "Tomatoes are often picked before they're technically ripe to ensure better preservation during transport, during which they ripen," says Svetlana Ilyashenko. "This can negatively impact their taste, as these fruits contain less vitamin C and lycopene (the carotenoid pigment that gives the fruit its color) than tomatoes ripened on the vine."

So, in winter, when tomatoes ripened to perfection on the vine can only be flown in from the far south, the thousands-dollar prices are justified: not only are they glamorous, but they're also truly tastier than regular tomatoes. But during the season—that is, from July to October—this premium is more of an image-boosting feature. It's a shame the season ends so quickly...