The Putrid of Durian Grey

Annette was recently shopping at the Great Wall Mall located a few miles south of us. The mall contains many shops selling everything Asian; from Japanese porno videos to whole deep fried ducks. At one of the shops she spotted the infamous Durian fruit. Another customer at the shop, who was originally from Thailand, told her that these were of exceptional quality and not the usual old frozen variety. We are willing to try almost anything when it comes to culinary adventures, so Annette picked up this fine specimen.


For those unfamiliar with the durian fruit, there are countless informational sites and videos of people’s reaction to them. To put it simply; they stink! My best description would be rotted cheese. We originally left it downstairs in the cool garage. After a while we determined that inside the house was not a good place for durians and moved it outside on the back deck.

The next day we took the durian down to the lower patio with newspapers and a large knife. Several flies soon joined us. After reading the stories and watching the videos, we were rather apprehensive about how bad it was going to be, once it was cut open. I bravely took the knife and sliced the durian in half.


Much to our surprise, the inside didn’t smell like much of anything. Either we really did get a very good one or the folks in the online videos are really over-acting. The insides consist of several large seeds surrounded by yellow matter custard. This is the portion that is edible.


It took several takes to get a picture that we liked. I ended up eating about a dozen bites, which was plenty. Annette had just a few bites. I would describe the taste as that of fermented bananas, almost liqueur-like. Anyway, a little durian does go a long way.

Bon Appetit!