Free the Tonka Bean

Alma Cocina Latina in Baltimore is fighting the FDA's outdated policy.

Tonka beans. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

In 2006, not long after the chef Grant Achatz spoke of using tonka beans in an interview, the FDA raided his Chicago restaurant Alinea. He didn’t even realize that this aromatic, dried legume had been illegal in the United States since 1954 because they contained trace elements of the chemical compound called coumarin, …