Travel

TRIPPY FRUIT TRIPS NOW

Courtesy of Husmeando Por La Red. Growing fruit for Sembikiya.

One of the most beautiful aspects of our planet, is that it produces a mind-blowing range of beautiful, exotic, truly amazing fruits. The only way to taste some of them is to travel to where they grow. It requires fruit passion. It goes way beyond passion fruit.

You can travel on your own to sample indigenous rarities in jungles, deserts, forests, and tiny farms. Or you can make a pilgrimage to the highest altars. We suggest some of each!

SEMBIKIYA

Nihonbashi Sembikiya’s shop in Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower, in Tokyo, sells fruit, but looks like a jewelry store. It has been run for almost 200 years by the same family.

In 1887, Sembikiya opened a fruit restaurant that became the forerunner of Japan’s first Fruit Parlor. It currently operates 14 stores, many of them concentrated in the Tokyo area. Approximately 80-90% of Sembikiya’s fruits are bought as a gift. In Japan for formal events, expensive fruit is the on everyone’s gift list.

Here’s a sampling of the extraordinary beauties you can find there.

SEKAI-ICHI APPLE

The “the best apple in the world,” the Sekai-ichi, from Japan, are individually hand-tended. They are washed with honey and branded by hand. They are kept blemish free. Even the Sekai-ichi orchards are pollinated by hand -- growers use a tiny wand to dust delicately. They are perfect in every way. To see for yourself, will cost you twenty times more than a more common apple.

DENSUKE WATERMELON

The Densuke Watermelon has black skin and vibrant coral flesh. It has a special type of sweetness, that cannot be compared or described well --- it must be tasted. It only grows on Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido. And there are only 100 Densuke produced each year.

The most expensive one ever sold weighed 17 pounds and sold for $6,100 at an auction in 2008. A record breaker -- for watermelons, that is.

YUBARI KING MELONS

Yubari King’s Melons trump Densuke’s. A pair of Yubari King Melons once went for $23,500 (making them the most expensive fruits in the world). Also grown on Hokkaido, Yubari Kings are hybrid, orange-fleshed melons with their own brand of sweet.

SQUARE WATERMELONS

Sembikiya was one of the first to offer Square Watermelons. These novel shaped juice-bombs sell for over a couple hundred dollars each.

RUBY ROMAN GRAPES

What kind of grapes does the ultimate fruit palace set out for your pleasure? The Ruby Roman Grapes, grown only in the Ishikawa Prefecture. They are the world’s most expensive grapes.

While one bunch sold at an auction in 2011 in Kanazawa, Japan, at about $10 per grape, this past July, a single bunch sold for $4,000, or about $110 per grape.

Each grape is like a juicy red ping-pong ball and weighs about 20 grams. These have a sugar content of about 18 percent.

STRAWBERRIES ARNAUD

If you want a trippy fruit trip in the US, you can start in the French Quarter, in New Orleans, with Strawberries Arnaud from 96-year old Arnaud’s restaurant.

These berries are jewels, with intense flavors steeped in Louisiana sunshine. They are so incredible that some people are moved to pay almost $1.5 million for just one bowl when they are ready to embark what might be the most important journeys of their lives.

The berries are topped with both whipped cream and a 4.7-carat pink diamond ring, and a jazz band accompanies every tasting. Wash them down after a white-gloved waiter pours rare port.

If you get cold feet, you can opt for a “virgin” Strawberries Arnaud for dessert -- sans ring, of course.

Read more about Beautiful Fruits, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including 10 Gorgeous New Books on Fruits, Beautiful New Fruit Buzz, Glow, and Inside Stories, Eat or Art??? and Dangerous Voluptuous High Concept Fruit Work.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Fruits in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 07.20.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!