Sing 5. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Part 5: The King of Fruit

There are a lot of fruits in this part of the world that, as westerners, we'd consider 'exotic'. Jack fruit (yum), those weird little things a bit like segmented lychees (yum), all manner of stuff. But they say the king of fruit is the durian.

Now, durian is a little on the nose. Indeed, it's so pungent that it's banned in some places. Cut open a durian in the wrong company and there'll be trouble. That said, you can't really avoid smelling it sometime in SE Asia. For example, the Park N Shop supermarket beneath the office in Hong Kong used to smell of durian, and a lot of taxis, both here and there, smell of it too. It's a sickly sweet smell, a real I've-just-been-sick-in-the-corner type of smell. But they say that it smells a lot worse than it tastes.

So when I tried it last night at the Changi Yacht Club with Ben's friends I was surprised how wrong "they" were. Being somewhat used to it I didn't find the smell that bad. I didn't take a huge lungful-type smell, but I could tell it wasn't incapacitating. But as for the eating... Let's just say that if durian is the king of fruit, then it is the King John of fruit. The King Louis XVI. The Ivan the Terrible. The Good King Wencesles it ain't.

The flesh was gooey. (Apparently the Thais like the flesh hard - gooey flesh can be indicative of rottenness.) There's a big pip in the middle of the goo and around six sets of goo-covered pips in all. (I really didn't count them, so don't hold me to it.) This is surrounded by thick white rind and a softish, green spiky shell.

As for the taste, initially it tastes a bit like it smells: kind of a sickly, breadfruity taste. Then the aftertaste kicks in. This is hard to describe. Interesting, that's for sure. And definitely exotic. Bitter. Bile-like. Putrid probably sums it up best. And repeating. It's the taste that keeps on tasting. For hours.

Of course, as the newbie, I was offered the last piece after I'd already relished my first. Politely I declined, but these guys weren't taking "no" for an answer. If anything, this piece was even more interesting and exotic than the first.

Eating many foods requires you simply win the mind game. Dog, eyes, brains, intestines, fish head. Clear the mental barrier and you're fine. So far, though, only durian has presented itself to me as a food for which you have to physically train.

So give it go if you're out this way. Maybe you'll love it straight away. My score, however, is a low one: 1/5 (1 for the benefit of the doubt. I don't want to write it off yet. Maybe it's better hard.)