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| When you saw this, your first thought was to put it in your mouth, right? |
This is rambutan: from the Indonesian rambut (hair).
I
first saw rambutan piled in a barrel on
an eastern Indonesian street in 2006.
A smiling, betel-nut chewing man watched over it casually from his spot
leaning against the bank.
He was flanked by people selling stinkbomb-like durians*, fragrant stacks
of jackfruit, and bunches of greyish longans and lychees, but I made a beeline
for the rambutan as though guided
by a string.
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| This is the Jayapura street market at night. Rambutan man works by day and stands at far right. |
It
was still my first week in the country and I barely knew how to say
numbers. We communicated with hand
signals. Rp. 20,000 per kilo.
I paid, took my baggie to the
beach, and plopped down on the sand staring at these angry-looking, spiny red
orbs, which stared inscrutably back at me.
 |
| It helps that inside they look like eyeballs. |
See, I had no one to teach
me. No one told me I had to peel
them or that the seeds were poisonous** or that I had to scrape the surface of
the seed with my teeth to get a corkscrew of perfect fruit, otherwise the flesh
would just collapse in a sea of delicious juice.
But I figured it out, and, well...
 |
| AWESOME! |
Here
I am realizing that if I hadn’t spun a globe randomly with my finger on it and
if I hadn’t decided to actually follow my finger and if I hadn’t been able to somehow get a work visa for one of the most war-torn provinces in Indonesia and if I
hadn’t come to work for this particular company and seen this particular rambutan-selling man, I may never have had this experience.
I
thought, and still think: all I knew up until then was pears and apricots and
apples and sometimes the odd mango. It was easy to think I knew what my favorite fruit was, but (I realized
as I swallowed the rambutan flesh)
there was no way I could have, and there will never be a way I can, until I’ve
tried every fruit in the world.
Where to find rambutan in Orange County:
Since Orange County is home to
Little Saigon, the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside of Hồ Chí Minh City,
the most reliable places to find rambutan tend
to be tiny Vietnamese fruit markets (anything with the words trái cây on the awning should do). In Vietnamese, the word for rambutan is chôm chôm (pronounced chohm chohm). The two
I frequent (that also happen to be right next to each other) are:
Trái Cây Ngon
8920 Bolsa Ave
Westminster, CA 92683
Thai Son
8922 Bolsa Ave
Westminster, CA 92683
Occasionally, Albertsons,
Wholesome Choice, or Whole Foods will carry them, but the price will be
anywhere from doubled to sextupled what it should be.
Depending on the season, a Vietnamese fruit market will charge between
$2.50 and $6 per pound, while I once witnessed Whole Foods charging $18.99! Not only that, the ones in the
traditional supermarkets tend to be brown and wilted. Better brown and wilted rambutan than no rambutan - their thick skin makes them hardy and resistant to overripening - but if
you have the choice, take advantage of the fresh, cheap ones.
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*Spoiler: durians are delicious despite their odor.
**Whether the rambutan seed is or is not in fact poisonous is a matter of much online debate. Suffice it to say that my Indonesian co-worker shrieked in terror when she saw me pop a whole one in my mouth a few days later.
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