In Search Of the Perfect Peach by Franco Fubini: A passionate rallying call for a change of mindset

In Search Of the Perfect Peach by Franco Fubini (Chelsea Green Publishing £20, 224pp) 

Born in Argentina to a German mother and an Italian father, Franco Fubini had a peripatetic childhood. But no matter where in the world he was, the local food always fascinated him.

There were ‘insane’ mangoes in Egypt, which his mother made into delicious chutney. In Italy he discovered the perfect sandwich filling, a combination of succulent Parma ham, mozzarella and tomatoes, while in Holland he fell in love with Gouda cheese.

Fubini went on to found Natoora, which works with small-scale growers to source the finest fruit and veg for restaurants in London, Paris and New York.

During lockdown, the company, which has a royal warrant, diversified into home deliveries of veg boxes and now also has a handful of bricks-and mortar stores in London.

His greatest joy still comes from discovering the most flavour some produce.

 He found his favourite tomato, which tastes ‘meaty, dense, rich, fleshy’, growing at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. 

He waxes lyrical about ‘the world’s sweetest onion’, cultivated in Lombardy using labour-intensive farming techniques that date back to the 10th century. 

Franco Fubini, founder of Natoora

In a market in Milan he spotted a peach with a skin colouration he’d never seen before. ‘Biting into it was like taking off on a rocket ship a  flavour so intense and magical that it blew my mind,’ he writes. 

It took him three years to track down the grower of this peach, a variety called Greta. It is now one of his company’s most popular products, ‘a work of pure edible art’.

Although he now lives in Britain, he hates the way we eat because, he says, so much of what British consumers buy is flavourless and insipid.

We have lost sight of what food should taste like and ‘the sad reality is that our palates and knowledge are evaporating’.

Supermarkets, which account for more than 80 per cent of the food sold in the UK, demand fruit and veg that is ‘bland, uniform, alien-looking’.

No apple or pear, however delicious, will make it on to the supermarket shelves if it’s knobbly or scarred.

Those rows of identical peppers may look pretty, he says, but they will not be the most nutritious or delicious.

Poll

Would you pay more for your fruit and veg if it meant it would taste better?

• Yes 3 votes
• No 0 votes
• It would depend on how much more I would have to pay 0 votes

As consumers, Fubini laments, we are simply not prepared to pay enough for quality food.

We no longer value good food and have lost sight of seasonality, expecting to find strawberries, peaches and asparagus right through the year.

Inevitably, his proposed solution involves paying more for our food – those hand-hoed onions don’t come cheap.

Fubini is a persuasive advocate for the benefits of better food but his message isn’t nearly as radical as he seems to think: people such as Jamie Oliver, Michael Pollan and Chris van Tulleken have all banged the same drum over the years, without our eating habits changing much.

This book is a passionate rallying call for a change of mindset ‘that will deliver the flavour-first food system we so desperately need’, but is the cash-strapped British consumer ready to listen?