How '90s TV Helped Turn Sun-Dried Tomatoes Into A Must-Have Ingredient

Who would have thought that a wrinkly, dried-out fruit would become one of the United States' biggest food crazes in the 1990s? It happened to sun-dried tomatoes, a retro food trend from the '80s and '90s. The story goes back to 1979 when Steve Jenkins, an employee at New York's once-famously trendy market Dean & DeLuca, saw large cans of sun-dried tomatoes hanging from the ceiling of a market in Cannes, France. He knew they were right for his own store and called the owner to say so. By 1981, they were included in the Dean & DeLuca gift bowl, and by 1983, the store was selling 250 pounds of sun-dried tomatoes a week. Sun-dried tomatoes were a full-fledged hit, especially after 1993. That year, the Harvard School of Public Health rolled out its Mediterranean Diet Pyramid, touting the Mediterranean Diet as one of the healthiest ways to eat.

The early '90s was also a time when the U.S. experienced growth in food-oriented media — the Food Network launched in 1993, making food and its trends a major focus. Saveur magazine began publishing in 1994. A cookbook aptly named "Sun-Dried Tomatoes" was published in 1995 and enjoyed massive popularity. All this helped to turn sun-dried tomatoes into the must-have ingredient of the '90s. But like most things that enjoy sensational popularity on TV, sun-dried tomatoes became so overdone that they fell out of favor, after which they became the butt of jokes.

It turned out that sun-dried tomatoes were incredibly versatile. They could be added to sandwiches, give tang to plain-old mashed potatoes, tossed in salads, stirred into soups, or get you hitched in pasta dishes like marry me chicken. And that turned into a problem. Their overuse as an ingredient became the subject of criticism on TV. In a 2002 episode of "Friends," Monica and a new food-savvy acquaintance find common ground on the subject. Speaking about a restaurant, he says, "What is it was all the sun-dried tomatoes at that place?" and Monica replies, "I know! What is this, 1985?"

As late as 2019, LA Times writer Evan Kleiman called sun-dried tomatoes "the Mickey Rourke of food." The actor gained great acclaim in the '80s, saw his career decline, and made a comeback decades later. Somewhat similarly, sun-dried tomatoes started reappearing in dishes as part of an unexpected second act. Though the jokes may have petered out, TV references to the food's boom-and-bust popularity haven't. In fact, the Food Network's competition show, "Chopped," paid homage to food fads in its "Time Capsule" series in 2021, including an episode titled "'90s Foods!" in which contestants received a lunch kit containing ingredients the contestants had to use in their dishes, including sun-dried tomatoes. In fact, they they may be poised for a renaissance. The market for sun-dried tomatoes was $1 billion in 2024, and it's expected to hit $1.58 billion by 2033, per Business Research Insights. So don't count this ingredient out quite yet.