The premise was simple: go for lunch with a prominent figure from the local entertainment or leisure industry, interview them and then review the restaurant. The bill (sans alcohol) was paid for by the newspaper, so it was a great little gig and regularly resulted in meeting interesting people. There were a set of five questions that everybody had to answer, but other than that I had free reign to take the conversation wherever I liked. One of the questions was, predictably, what is your favourite thing to eat. (Not so predictably, one interviewee answered: "My girlfriend.") Another question was, is there anything you refuse to eat, which usually resulted in standard answers such as "olives" or "brussels sprouts". However, during lunch with Marc Armstrong, owner of Dubai-based watersports company Al Boom Marine, I learnt that while he had eaten frogs legs in France and mopane worms in South Africa, he point blank refused to consider eating a Filipino dish called "balut". |
There is a reason none of these dishes are globally popular.
Having comfortably cracked it open on the side of my kitchen work-top, I was surprised to find a load of seeds wrapped in a creamy white pulp. For whatever reason (and I blame the cocktail), I had expected a liquid centre much like a coconut. Instead, it was more like a Sri Lankan mangosteen and required a lot of picking and peeling and sucking and spitting. All for not much reward.
The pulp was succulent, the taste was quite sweet and had a hint of lemon, but there was not a great deal to eat. Perhaps there is a trick to getting the pulp off the seeds, but I spent more time pulling pips out of the mouth than I did chewing any of the actual fruit. I can also confirm cocoa seeds taste absolutely nothing like chocolate, although that was no surprise. For now then, I will return to using cacau only as a cocktail glass and my favourite fruit will remain the durian, which, if you have never tried, you must -- although you may want to hold your nose. Native to Southeast Asia, the durian's smell is so potent it is prohibited on public transport and in many hotels, while its taste has been described as "tiramisu mixed with diarrhoea". One literary critic even likened it to "a mixture of carrion and custard". I find it delicious. ISWAS |