much has been said and written about this quaint little object previously, by much more intelligent and qualified people than i, but i ate this shit and took these pictures, so i have to tell someone about it so feel like i wasn't just torturing myself for nothing. besides, i can swear more eloquently and at greater length than most of the people who've tasted it before, with the possible exception of anthony bourdain. here is some background if you're curious.
so. i should mention before we get down to the matter at hand that none of this would have been possible without the overall wonderfulness of the viet hoa grocery store, right down the street from yours truly on cleveland, right off of madison. any locals who haven't been: go. your horns will be swoggled, your minds will be boggled, your nipples will explode with delight. effusive praise aside, i also wanted to mention that they sell these bastards frozen in a big open top case with a big hanging scale next to it, and you select the fruit which seems most appealing (i went with a smaller model with an insouciant spot of red on the back) and weigh it and bring it up - at 1.59 a pound mine ended up being like seven bucks or so, which i figured wasn't too excessive for lunch (if i could get it down, that is) and a story that i could tell for years.
while i was inspecting and weighing my selection a nice asian lady walked up and started talking to me. this is how the exchange went.
her: "are you going to eat that?"
me, with grim eyed determination: "yes i am...i have to know what it tastes like"
her, regarding me warily: "you're the only caucasian i've ever seen buy one of those things"
me, overly proud of my cultural openness: "cool!"
i should have known. she was just trying to warn me. i should have known.
anyway basic facts. about 5lb or so, maybe the size of a regulation nfl football if shaped somewhat differently. covered in seriously sharp spikes and spines. small stem, which broke off without too terribly much of a struggle signifying, if my research is correct, that it was perhaps not the freshest durian you could ever get in the world. i could have told you that. i feared that as it began to thaw the smell would become overpowering, so we drove back to my apartment with the damn thing hanging out the window, just in case, and we (we being my dear friends alec and jeff, visiting from out of town) left it on the back steps while we got ready to take it to overton park to conduct the actual test. what, you didn't think i was bringing it into my home, did you? they won't allow it on public transportation in most of the civilized world and there are some countries that ban the damn thing entirely (i think)!
here we are at the park. note the previously mentioned insouciant splash of red on the back. was it a warning? i was raring to find out. as it thawed there was still no particularly terrible odor, and the only thing i noticed was a kind of sappy substance that was coming from where the stem had been (light spot on the back, visible here) and a general softening up of the outer shell. i found after it thawed that it was kind of malleable, although the spikes would definitely prevent you from playing catch with it or anything.
preparing to strike. i should mention we came armed - blanket, beers, water, barf bag, spoons, the works. getting the thing open would probably be kind of a pickle for some but this was just another instance when i was thankful to have an 18 inch machete just sitting around
what it looks like. not much to speak of, visually, although i was intrigued by the different little compartments and caverns inside of it...here's a better angle.
so what you're seeing here is the pulpy, viscous "meat" of this thing, interspersed with the harder, cartilage-like separating interior...material. god, i sound like i'm doing an autopsy. i guess it's appropriate. anyway what you do is scoop out the insides with a spoon and eat it. that's raw, of course, from what i understand there are things you can make with it and things you can do with it to make it more palatable (i don't believe that for a second, but it's what they say anyway) but as the modern hercules who inspired the name of this blog, the old dirty bastard, said: "ooh baby i like it raw, yeah baby i like it RAAAAAWWWWW!!!!!"
also discovered these massive, horse chestnut sized seeds hiding in the thick, pudding-like material that constitutes the "edible" (and i use that word in the loosest possible sense) portion of this thing. unsure what to do with them, i opted to fling four or five of them willy-nilly around the park in the hopes that they would take seed and sprout huge proud durian trees that the county then had to remove at great expense, because people were complaining about the smell. we'll see how that works out.
here's a better shot of the guts getting scooped out.
so. you may have noticed that i've been talking about everything BUT the taste and smell up to this point. that is because i am afraid. ladies and gentlemen i am afraid to revisit what might have been the most disgusting experience of my life, to date. afraid that if i plunge into the darkened forests of memory in search of an appropriate way to describe the abomination that i consumed in the park that day, that it might reach out through the mists of time and claim me as its own, forever. but i am not now and will never be a man who deserts his duty, even in the face of possible doom. so allow me to clear my head for a moment and try to call to mind some way to understand the horror and convey it to you, dear readers.
bad. it tasted really really bad and it smelled bad too.
i could dress it up with all sorts of fancy english major words, i could doll it up with lengthy descriptions of the foul bouquet, utterly malevolent palate and excruciatingly long and unpleasant finish that i've learned at the wine shop, i could slap a coat of intellectual varnish on it or i could just cuss up a storm but all you need to know is that it tastes and smells really really bad and you shouldn't eat it. the texture is somewhere between pudding and celery if you can imagine that, and the taste is of onions and a straight up rotten corpse, with a sickeningly sweet finish to the smell that just lingers in your mouth and nose and explodes into the air for literally yards and yards in every direction.
honestly, at first taste i thought "well this isn't THAT awful i could even get to like it, a little" but jesus once the full body of the thing sets in and especially once it's been sitting out and ripening in the air a little it is just beyond description. after we had all had a taste and finished gagging and vigorously wiping off all our utensils (machete included - i am more than sure that it would have eaten straight through the metal just by the force of its sheer unbridled nastiness) and double and triple checking to make sure that none of it got on our clothes or persons (you could literally ruin someone's life if you smeared this stuff in their home/car/closet - it didn't want to come off of the metal and i bet it NEVER comes out of fabric) i scooped up a bunch into a ziploc bag so amy could smell it when she came home from work, and i left it behind the dumpster out back of our apartment building, and three hours later when she got home you could smell it through the ziploc bag it was in AND the shopping bag that the ziploc was in from seriously fifteen feet away. ugh oh god i can still smell it.
i could say more, so much more, but i think you get the idea. honestly if you're an adventurous spirit and you have seven bucks to blow i would encourage you to try it, probably more for the fact that i'd have someone to share horror stories with than anything else, but who knows, you might love it. i didn't. my only advice is BE CAREFUL WITH IT, handle it like you would radioactive material because it is nearly as dangerous. but unless you count yourselves among the truly brave of palate, avoid it at all costs. avoid anyone who suggests you eat it, avoid countries where it is grown and consumed, and if anyone offers it to you, remember the only appropriate response is "go fuck yourself."
before i go i can hear some of you asking "yes but dave, for all the long winded descriptions and colorful turns of phrase we never actually did see any evidence that you consumed the substance in question, so how can we trust your account? hm? hm?" well here you go sam waterston, choke on this. i almost did.
durian from david nielsen on Vimeo.
that'll about do it for oh dear god why taste test #1. thanks to jeff and alec for playing along and even trying a little and i'll see you kids again soon for installment #2: scandinavian delight. talk to you then
love
d
