ARLINGTON, Va. -- At a party here one recent Friday, Jacob Grier stood on a chair, pulled out a plastic bag full of small berries, and invited everyone to eat one apiece. "Make sure it coats your tongue," he said.
Mr. Grier's guests were about to go under the influence of miracle fruit, a slightly tart West African berry with a strange property: For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet.
Within minutes of consuming the berries, guests were devouring lime wedges as if they were candy. Straight lemon juice went down like lemonade, and goat cheese tasted as if it was "covered in powdered sugar," said one astonished partygoer. A rich stout beer seemed "like a milkshake," said another.
After languishing in obscurity since the 1970s, miracle fruit, or Synsepalum dulcificum, is enjoying a small renaissance. In-the-know food lovers from Hawaii to Finland are seeking out the berry as a culinary curiosity. In Japan, it's freeze-dried and canned or sold in tablets. Some restaurants there have featured it as an avant-garde dessert, including at Tokyo's Mandarin Oriental hotel. So has the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where two miracle-fruit shrubs are planted in the hotel's garden.
continued: http://www.gimundo.com/Articles/Daily/697
Mr. Grier's guests were about to go under the influence of miracle fruit, a slightly tart West African berry with a strange property: For about an hour after you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet.
Within minutes of consuming the berries, guests were devouring lime wedges as if they were candy. Straight lemon juice went down like lemonade, and goat cheese tasted as if it was "covered in powdered sugar," said one astonished partygoer. A rich stout beer seemed "like a milkshake," said another.
After languishing in obscurity since the 1970s, miracle fruit, or Synsepalum dulcificum, is enjoying a small renaissance. In-the-know food lovers from Hawaii to Finland are seeking out the berry as a culinary curiosity. In Japan, it's freeze-dried and canned or sold in tablets. Some restaurants there have featured it as an avant-garde dessert, including at Tokyo's Mandarin Oriental hotel. So has the Four Seasons Resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where two miracle-fruit shrubs are planted in the hotel's garden.
continued: http://www.gimundo.com/Articles/Daily/697