The Internet’s Secret Tropical Fruit Stand

One fateful summer many years ago, I took a bite of my first mangosteen. I was staying with my great-uncle’s family in Shanghai, and in lieu of the “American fruits” I ate at home (apples, grapes, watermelon), we snacked on tropical fruits like lychees, rambutans, and mangosteens. It looked like a cartoon rendering, with its deep purple shell and sakura emoji-stamped bottom, and the fruit inside, which resembles garlic cloves crossed with clementine slices, tasted like vanilla and white peach and, at least to me, a little bit like blood, which somehow made the sweetness sharper.

When I came back to America, I had to find mangosteens. But I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t for several years. Until 2007, mangosteens were banned from the United States over fears that these Southeast Asian imports would carry Asian fruit flies. Since the ban’s lift, all incoming Thai mangosteens (along with Thai lychees, longans, rambutans, pineapples, and regular mangoes) must go through an irradiation treatment, which, some believe, impairs flavor. Non-irradiated mangosteens from Mexico and Puerto Rico are sold at specialty grocers like northern California’s Berkeley Bowl and even at Whole Foods, which first sourced mangosteens for southern California in 2013. Yet timing and geography make it feel nigh impossible to find mangosteens at the grocery store: They’re only in season during rainy Southeast Asian summers, and much of the export tradeout of Thailand, Malaysia, and India is consumed by closer neighbors like China. Plus, both the fruit and seedlings are confoundingly fragile, which is why there are so few non-native nurseries.

Last summer, when I saw that Berkeley Bowl stocked a single bucket of mangosteens in their gigantic produce section, I let out a scream. I bought one mangosteen for $8 per pound and savored this long-missed taste of childhood summer. When the weather started heating up in the Bay Area again this year, I offhandedly mentioned to my partner that oh, wouldn’t it be nice to eat a mangosteen again. He chimed in, “You can buy them on Etsy.”. Read more