Where was the best place you travelled to that had the best fruit - quality, availability, presence of wild fruit, etc?
Obviously the tropics are gonna come out on top here but I'm hoping anons can narrow it down to some region or place that struck them as a cut above the rest. Whether it was wild fruit from foraging or markets in a city with outstanding produce, I'd like to hear your stories.
I haven't been outside Europe so the one place that stood out to me was Uppsala in Sweden - Mulberry, Plum & Cherry trees growing everywhere. In late July & August you can literally eat for free
Undoubtedly Morocco. As poor as the people are there, I don’t think they realize they have better access to fresh, seasonable produce than most westerners. Last time I was there you could get half a kilo of tangerines for 20¢ and they were always peak ripeness, not hit-and-miss like supermarket citrus. Pomegranates, cherries, all for almost free. A street food specialty in the north are these weird berries called chachnou I’ve never seen anywhere else. In the south it’s prickly pears, which they’ll peel for you so you don’t suffer. The fact that you find all this stuff by wandering through medieval souks is icing on the cake.
For wild foraging, Oahu was good. Lychees fucking everywhere and I found a few weird tropical things including mountain apples and something native to the Philippines which tasted like a strawberry smoothie.
Maine is a paradise for wild blueberries. There’s probably no fruit that even comes close in flavor IMO. You’re allowed to pick them in Acadia NP though unfortunately they ripen at peak tourist season.
Are you the Anon that mentioned the Souss Valley being a good place for forgaing wild figs & whatnot?
Did I post this in your last thread? Go to France in early November.
This is the first fruit bread I've made but thanks for the tip.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrKEeyhQxkfeXy-HN1R8wCA/videos
The single best mangoes I have ever tasted, by an order of magnitude, were a variety indigenous to and grown almost exclusively in Haiti. There’s a Dominican cousin that gets exported but it’s inferior. Costa Rica had and Hawaii tied for the finest papaya I’ve ever had—a smaller, lighter-fleshed, less mealy variety than the standard squashlike mush. Thailand is an all-round champ for tropical fruits apart from the aforementioned, but it’s not a great place for wild fruit foraging. In-season cherries from the Pacific Northwest or British Columbia are hard to beat.
BRB getting shot by gang bangers at a Mango stall
I had something in west africa which a Peace Corps girl told me was a mango-papaya hybrid. It was fucking amazing but I’m pretty sure she was wrong about what it was, I don’t think you can hybridize those two things.
I like my mangoes the Asian way, slightly green and sprinkled with Hispanices. Most mango-growing regions I’ve visited tend to prefer green mangoes, and I suspect that’s because they’re so sought-after they’re usually stolen before they can ripen on the tree. Orchard theft in the 3rd world is rampant (and fun or so I hear)
I think that was someone else as I’ve never personally scrumped figs, but that would be a good area to do it. Oases in the Tafraoute region are semi-wild food forests, meaning over the centuries humans have cut inedible plants for firewood and forage, and left the useful plants to grow and reproduce. Same reason 8 out of 10 plants in an English hedge are edible in some way.
>Hawaii tied for the finest papaya I’ve ever had
This. I thought I hated papaya before having it in Hawaii
I am not a picky eater and there are very few foods I wouldn't eat at all, but papaya is one of them. Should I try again if I'm ever there?
Papayas are like pineapples...mouth-puckeringly awful when picked unripe and shipped halfway across the world while 'ripening' but are divine when picked at peak ripeness and eaten straight away.
I had the best cherries of my life from a stand on the side of the road in Tasmania for about $4 for a kilo at Christmas time
This is an unpopular opinion but I think Thailand's fruits are very overrated. Everything is extremely sweet which is understandable given south east Asian obsession with sugar that they dump in absolutely everything. The only things that stand out are durian and mangosteen. There's another thing called Marion plum but those are difficult to get. Everything else is basically just sugar with very little flavor nuance. Contrast this with European pears, apples and berries. Also what is it with this obsession for giant strawberries that are devoid of taste? Give me a strawberry that's a quarter of the size and x10 the flavor please.
Chiang Mai, Thailand has a lot of fruit festivals I believe, and Thailand has some famous fruitarians.
Durian Rider and Freelee.
They're from Oz m8.
berries in the Baltics, Scandinavia and Northern Russia
melons in Central Asia
I haven't been there, but from what I have heard the Marquesas Islands, apparently there is just fruit everywhere, locals might get pissed if you pick it without asking though.
I'm in Honduras right now and the fruit you can get at fruit stands on the North Coast is all quite good, as well as cheap. Mangos, pineapple, bananas, guava etc are all excellent and there is quite a lot of unusual fruits you would never see in the USA such as nonce.
Cairns australia. Best mangoes.
Apparently Afghanistan has the best pomegranates in the world.
Fruit types seems to do best in the regions they originated in and no amount of soil additives or caring for plants can replicate its natural habitat.
Taiwan had some pretty amazing fruit. Godly pineapples, mangoes, guava, custard apples, different types of citrus, wax apples, lychees, passionfruit, longan, mountain bananas, papayas, Asian pear, etc. The fruit is something I really miss about living there.
Italy. Even in the north you have many typed of fruit trees. Italians are very picky about their food so most produce is top quality and from Italy.