I went to Rock & Roll Ralph’s the other day. That’s the Ralph’s grocery store on Sunset Boulevard notorious for the after hours, post-clubbing shenanigans of Hollywood’s drunk and belligerent.
It was mid-day though, so my visit was met with only a homeless guy or two, and young people handing out flyers for who-knows-what.
I’ve been here many, many times, as my ex used to live around the corner. Plus my car was stolen across the street from here in 2008. I have some strange memories here.
This day was special though. I was perusing the produce section when I spotted a most glorious pile of exotic fruit: PASSION FRUIT!
I was super stoked, as it’s the first time I’ve been able to find it since I’ve been back in the States.
You see, during my round-the-world travels, I developed somewhat of an addiction to this delectable fruit. In my heart of hearts, I believe it is one of the greatest flavors mother nature has ever given us.
About the size of a kiwi fruit, the passion fruit is an ugly little thing with its wrinkly dark purple exterior (sometimes yellow). But once sliced in half, it reveals a collection of small black seeds encased in rich golden fruit. It’s extremely aromatic and tart. The seeds are hollow and edible. It tastes like a berry flowery lemon.
I first tried a passion fruit when I was in Goa, India. My travel bestie Maja and I were with our host Daniel (who you met in Good Old Goa), visiting his mother’s amazing hilltop house and garden. As we walked around the garden and learned about the many exotic herbs and plants growing there, Maja spotted a passion fruit and excitedly asked if she could have it.
I said I’d never tried one, and she gave me that like look, “Oh my gawd, you haven’t lived!” We later went back to Daniel’s house, sliced it in half, spooned out the delicious fruit and ate the hell out of it. How does such an ugly looking fruit taste so damn goooood?!?!?
The light crisp of the seeds crackling in my teeth…the mouth-puckering tartness of its juices…ohhhhh, they give me a joy I cannot describe.
Maja told me that the uglier and wrinklier the passion fruit is on the outside, the more ripe and sweet it is on the inside.
I took this advice with me when I later traveled to Vietnam and made it my home base for several months. Passion fruit grows in warm climates, and is best known to grow in South America and Asia. I always kept an eye out for passion fruit whenever I went to the market in Vietnam. It wasn’t as common as mangoes or dragon fruit, but it wasn’t hard to find.
In Vietnam, passion fruit is generally used to add flavor to fruit juices and smoothies, so the locals thought I was crazy to eat it plain. I would munch on those seeds, crackling like a monster, and the locals would cringe with horror, asking me, “Isn’t it too sour? You need sugar!”
Oh, no. No sugar for me. I’m a passion fruit purist.
Passion fruit is super healthy too. It’s loaded with vitamins. In fact, whenever I started feeling a cold coming on, I’d eat a passion fruit and feel amazing. It might’ve been in my head, but in the months that I ate one to two passion fruits per day, my body felt super light and healthy.
Passion fruit became my go-to snack not only because it was healthy and delicious though – it was ridiculously cheap in Vietnam too! My first couple times buying passion fruit on my own, a kilo of passion fruit (about 10-12 fruit) cost me 20,000 Vietnamese Dong (VND). That’s about a dollar, folks – $1 per KILO.
Later on, I would be at the market with a Vietnamese friend, and she’d tell me I was overpaying! So once I became better at bargaining with the locals, I was paying less than half that – 9,000 VND! Less than 50 cents per kilo! Score!
That brings me back to Rock & Roll Ralph’s and my recent passion fruit discovery there. Guess how much a passion fruit costs in Hollywood.
$1.99.
EACH.
Whoa! A part of me thought that it was outrageous – and it IS! – but I didn’t care. I coulda bought a bottle of Trader Joe’s cab sav for every tiny passion fruit there, and I still loaded up my grocery basket anyway.
When I got to the checkout counter, the cashier stopped when she scanned the passion fruit, and did a double-take. Even she thought it was outrageous. She asked, “You know these are $1.99 each, right? Not per pound?”
I smiled.
“Yep.”
I got passion for passion fruit, lady!