Strange Fruit

The WellerWorld staff have picked Adam Leith Gollner's book, The Fruit Hunters as its Best Wellers selection for December/January. This resulted in a lot of people thinking and talking about fruit. Because really, if you can read this book without feeling hungry, you're probably close to death. It is a tour de force of the fruit world: from biology to economics to descriptions of some of the most amazing edibles in nature (fruits that look like female buttocks anyone?) including the durian.

Gollner introduces the reader to the fruit by describing a durian tasting party at an apartment in New York City. It was so smelly that the apartment building was evacuated due to a suspected gas leak. The odor was the durian, a fruit so odiferous that it is banned in public places in several countries. Despite the fruit's odor, durian devotees are rapturous about its texture and taste which is described as custard-like with hints of banana, vanilla, nuts and garlic. So when a Weller's staffer offered to procure a durian for us, fellow staffer John Clukey and I were excited. Who wouldn't be?

When the durian arrived, it was fearsome. The thing was about the size and shape of a football and covered with spines. And it smelled. A lot. Like putrefaction. The warmer it got, the smellier it got. Somehow it ended up abandoned; stinking on my desk. So I did the logical thing: I took it to the sales floor and put it on the display table for Fruit Hunters. The staffer working the info desk near the display had a cold so he didn't complain. What the customers thought I'll never know because they were too polite to say anything.

We took the durian outside to the alley behind the bookstore when it was time to sample it. John and I were equipped with a cutting board, a large knife and a lot of paper towels from home. I brought an entire roll because the idea of eating the durian had become so daunting that I decided it would be horribly messy despite the fact that no one had described it as juicy. I was so intimidated by the thing that I handed John my knife. No way was I going to cut it. John traced a line along the outside and sawed in. When he parted the shell of the durian I exclaimed, "Oh my God! It looks like a symbiont!"

We each grabbed a segment of the sybiont and bit in. The flesh was good, very good. It was indeed like custard, with a hint of sulfer. It was good enough that I ate two segments. John, far happier with the durian than I was, ate four segments while I went inside to get other staffers to join us. It was a party on the back curb with the same heady vibe that accompanies illicit activities in alleys all over the world. I was positively giddy. People were gasping and laughing with combined delight and repulsion. Some ate, some only watched. One suggested we'd all get food poisoning. For a moment I thought it was possible. But then I was overcome by that heady sense of encountering the unknown and feeling somehow changed, somehow richer for it.

We didn't get poisoned. Many of us, however, suffered some pretty smelly after effects. What we all got was a culinary adventure that made for lively and engaging conversation for the rest of the day and into the next. Strangely, one hour on the back curb with a very stinky fruit made for a better team building exercise than nearly anything I could have procured from a high powered consultant. And it all started with a book.