📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Appetitnye Shchechki (Appetizing Cheeks)
- 🌍 Origin: A modern commercial Russian variety introduced by the “Gavrish” seed company. The name charmingly translates to “Appetizing Cheeks”.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate (tall), mid-season (110-115 days). Recommended for greenhouse growing but can perform well outdoors in warmer zones.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Designed to be a stunning anthocyanin bicolor beefsteak. The fruits are large (200-350 g / 7-12 oz). The skin is yellow-orange with red stripes and deep purple (anthocyanin) shoulders. The interior is marbled orange and pink.
- 👅 Flavor: Exceptional. Very sweet, juicy, and meaty, lacking acidity, and featuring a highly praised citrus aftertaste.
- ⚠️ Growing Note (Genetics): Because it is a relatively new commercial release, some growers report the seed line might still be slightly unstable (segregating). While some get the perfect purple-shouldered bicolors, others report getting round yellow-orange fruits with no anthocyanin at all.
A new bicolor beefsteak variety, mid-season (110-115 days from germination to fruiting), indeterminate, meant for growing in greenhouses. The fruits have a very unusual color pattern, large (200-350 g / 7-12 oz), and oblate (flattened-round) in shape.
They are very juicy, meaty, and sweet, with absolutely no acidity and a pleasant citrus aftertaste. When sliced, the flesh is orange with a pink center. Ripe tomatoes are yellow-orange with red stripes and a purple anthocyanin splash on the shoulders. The more sun they get, the more red stripes and intense purple splashing you’ll see. They are absolutely perfect for fragrant summer salads and vibrant veggie platters.
I grew this variety from Gavrish seeds two years in a row. I just had to try it! 😆 Mine were from this exact seed packet. Pardon the unsterile scale! 🙈 It lives in the greenhouse and has become purely a dirty work tool over time.
Both years it produced perfect round “ball” tomatoes—absolutely beautiful yellow-orange bicolors. I only managed to save one sliced photo of a fruit that grew from a megabloom. But the vast majority were perfectly round spheres. It is quite a heavy yielder with a gorgeous color pattern. And most importantly, it actually turned out to be delicious! It made my Top 10 best-tasting tomatoes of 2025. I’m growing it again in 2026 just to check if the taste remains stable from year to year.
I really liked the variety. Special thanks to Gavrish.
I grew it from the exact same seed packet. Yes, they were round balls, yes, it was a heavy yielder and quite early too. It grew in full sun outdoors in open ground, but there wasn’t even a hint of anthocyanin (purple) on a single fruit 😞 Was it an off-type / wrong seed?
Zi wrote:
I grew it from the exact same seed packet. Yes, they were round balls, yes, it was a heavy yielder and quite early too. It grew in full sun outdoors in open ground, but there wasn’t even a hint of anthocyanin (purple) on a single fruit 😞 Was it an off-type / wrong seed?
Marina, who knows, maybe the genetics are still segregating and they released an unstable, raw line to the market. I guess I got lucky, mine breeds completely true to type. I’ll be watching it for the third time this year. There are very few reviews for this variety out there, so it’s not even clear yet what everyone else is getting.
