The Durian Report

Durian, "the king of fruits", is wildly popular in SE Asia. Those of you who are familiar with the fruit are probably already making groaning noises.

Because it smells. Durian is a love/hate thing. Our favorite travel TV host, Tony Bordian from No Reservations, cannot keep it down. He'll eat almost anything else. But durian makes him, well, a bit queezy.

On our errands and adventure to Lombok the other day we asked our guesthouse owners to pick some up while in town so we could try it under controlled circumstances back at the ranch.

I finally got up the nerve this morning to give it a try after breakfast. Durians are hard to open. One needs a butcher's knife and a lot of skill. The first durian we tried was not quite ripe. The smell was not as pungent as normal and the typical gooey texture was chewy. The taste was... odd. Very non distinct, and totally un-fruit-like.

So another fruit was opened and the game was on! The smell - strange. Alicia first described it as burnt sesame seeds and then moved on to a 'burnt onion bagel, with sesame seeds on top'. A group of German's next to us laughed at my offer for some of the durian and mentioned that it tastes like onion to them.

I went in for the first gooey bite. Most people have an instant reaction to durian. Mine was clearly not positive at first. But I also didn't spit it out (like Alicia did :). As I kept eating it tasted more and more like something 'savory' - like a cooked onion. The texture is very smooth and gooey - not a bad thing by itself. However when combined with a strange sweet/savory/fruitness, its a bit much.

I didn't last beyond one piece. Quickly some mint gum was found as my dislike began to grow.

The durian went back to the kitchen to be hoovered up by the excited kitchen staff. The fruit is actually quite expensive for normal working people. So this was a nice treat for all the islanders.

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some 'choice' quotes from the above-linked Wikipedia article. If you are squeamish do not read further:

While Wallace cautions that "the smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable", later descriptions by westerners are more graphic. British novelist Anthony Burgess writes that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory."[18] Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions."[19] Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother."[20] Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:
“ ... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.[21] ”
Hydrogen sulphide, one of the chemical compounds that may be responsible for the characteristic odour of durian

Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.[22]