The Durian Experience

I went to Hawaii with a mission. This time, I would try durian, that notorious fruit that stops globe-trekking chefs in their tracks. I'd already missed other opportunities in Asia and Hawaii; this time would be different.

Durian, the king of fruit, comes from Southeast Asia, where it is used for both sweet and savory dishes. Some claim it has powerful health effects, and some claim it is an aphrodisiac; however, the fruit is nearly inedible to those not accustomed to its odor. Durian is even prohibited in some establishments because of this overpowering odor. Supposedly, it can be smelled over a long distance even when the fruit is uncut.

My original goal was to try the fruit plain; I had visions of having a meaningful connection with some fruit seller who would machete open the hard, thorny fruit for me as though I was a Food Network celeb in a far off land. I chickened out. I couldn't bring myself to buy a whole durian at one of the markets, ask someone to chop it open, taste a tiny bit on the streets of Chinatown, likely gag obnoxiously in front of them, and then throw out the fruit like a careless, culturally insensitive spendthrift.

So, I settled for a durian smoothie with pearls in Chinatown.

When I ordered one, the woman behind the counter said, "You know what it is?" I assured her I knew, but that I had never tried it before. She simply said, "Tastes good, smells bad," and smiled.

I wouldn't exactly say good was a perfect description of the taste, but durian does smell bad. It smells like trash, like my garbage can in summer after we've missed trash day. My husband, who suffered though only one or two small slugs of the shake, fondly remembers a taste of "creamy, buttery ass." Actually, he said something far more crude than I care to record here.

But, I found that if you don't pause significantly between sips, like less than 5 seconds, the rotten odor starts to fade away and the sweeter taste of the fruit emerges. So, I kept slurping. Tempered by sweetened condensed milk, ice, and tapioca pearls, the durian took on a flavor more like a melon, but a melon that was somehow off. Every time I stopped for a breath, the sewage-rot odor returned with a vengeance.

And yet, it was growing on me. It had been a long time, since fermented eggs and duck knuckles in Beijing, since I had tried something this different. I was happy; the brief exotic experience and the famously fragrant fruit nudged me to shake my mid-winter Minnesota blues.

And I felt ready. Ready for the durian without the palate pleasing support of the smoothie. Thailand, anyone?