Wexford man Anthony opens new edible garden online store

After 8 years in the making, Anthony O’Toole’s horticulture project, Fat Tomato, has finally ripened.

Fat Tomato, a dynamic new edible garden and kitchen food brand and edible garden honesty farm shop located on the picturesque Carrig Rua Hill in North Wexford, has officially launched its online store just in time for Christmas shopping. The store is brimming with bold, vibrant old and new Irish flavours.

Like the changing seasons, the products will evolve throughout the year, offering a rotating selection of bottles and jars, garden seeds, and colourful fresh produce, all created by founder Anthony O’Toole and his team as they grow, harvest, make, and mature.

A person standing in a shed

Description automatically generated — Photo credit: Kirsty Lyons

Driven by curiosity, biodiversity, and flavour, Anthony draws inspiration from his edible garden, now home to over 500 varieties of heritage fruit, herbs, and vegetables. His product range brings a fresh, flavour-packed twist to everyday meals. Anthony’s commitment to biodiversity and quality shines through in the Fat Tomato range, offering something for every palate.

Open all year round, seven days a week, his Edible Garden Honesty Farm Shop is a treasure trove of delicious goodies, some things that are not available online. These include fresh heritage herbs, fruit and vegetables, rainbow eggs, potted plants, and a selection of bottled and jarred flavours worth visiting to taste. The shop also showcases hand-picked produce and local crafts from like-minded artisans.

Both the online store and the farm shop are packed with seasonal flavours, making them perfect for Christmas gifts for friends, family, and colleagues. But act quickly—once the limited-edition products are sold out, you’ll have to wait until the next harvest—or longer, depending on what the weather brings next year!

Fat Tomato’s new collection includes a number of unique gift ideas:

Damson Apple Gin Jam – A delicious soft-set jam made with Merryweather damsons, Bramley apples, and Highbank Orchards organic apple gin.
Hedgerow Jelly – A seasonal delight packed with wild berries and fruits like elderberries, sloes, crabapples, and rose hips.
Peach Spice Chutney – a sweet-spiced aged chutney that goes so well in a cheese toastie.
Blackcurrant Butter – A velvety-smooth fruit butter that strikes the perfect balance between savoury-sweet and tangy.
Fig Leaf and Lime Cordial – A refreshing taste of toasted coconut and lime, ideal for evening aperitifs or adding flavour to your morning porridge.
Bloody Mary Salt – a go-too seasoning not just for the rim of a Bloody Mary. It has over 100 varieties of heritage tomatoes, Dillisk seaweed, Wexford sea salt, and Achill Island sea salt.
The Grow and Cook Gift Box – The perfect present for garden and kitchen enthusiasts, featuring heritage garden seeds, a selection of cordials, jelly, bottled tomatoes, herbs, and a beautifully illustrated organic tea towel.

Each product is crafted with natural ingredients, free from artificial preservatives, additives, or colours. Fat Tomato is committed to supporting small farmers and sourcing ingredients sustainably, ensuring every product is as delicious as it is environmentally conscious. To preserve the authentic flavours of his garden, Anthony uses his homemade apple cider vinegar, organic raw cane sugar, local raw honey, organic spices, and citrus fruit sourced directly from growers in Sicily, Italy, and Spain through the CrowdFarming platform.

“Since childhood, I dabbled in growing various herbs and vegetables in pots, but nothing like what I’ve embarked on with my edible garden,” says Anthony O’Toole, founder of Fat Tomato. “As a chef, I’m always searching for flavour with integrity, so my edible garden is all about growing for flavour, not yield. I vividly remember my first harvest in 2016. The tomatoes were bursting with flavour, the peas sweet, the beans tender, the cucumbers crisp, the chillies fruity, the corn sweet, the tomatillos tangy, and the squash rich and nutty. The garden felt like an edible forest, and everything grew from there.”

Anthony has big plans for the future. He started the garden at the back of his parent’s home in 2016 with a bigger vision from the start—to begin again.

With excitement, he shares:

“It will be a new place for living, a smallholding, a home for sharing, a garden and workshop where chefs, farmers, writers, and other creatives can escape, hide, breathe, energise, and get time to dream. And, most importantly, grow, cook, and eat. It will be an edible forest of new and old Irish flavours, where you never know who you might meet, what you might taste, or what might happen—adding an element of excitement to your stay.”

Fat Tomato products are available exclusively through the online shop, the honesty farm shop, and, later, select small independent stores. For more information, visit www.fattomato.ie.