I wish we had less selection, in general. My family lives in Spain, and I’ve also lived in France. This is just my observation, but American grocery stores clearly emphasize always having a consistent variety, whereas my Spanish family expects to eat higher quality produce seasonally. I suspect that this is a symptom of a wider problem, not the cause, but American groceries are just fucking awful by comparison, and so much more expensive too.
What I would give for an actual fresh greengrocer 😔
Move to straya, plenty of jobs atm, free healthcare, not a lot of homes and no where near the consumer brand choice. But it also means rich are not as rich, and no guns (by comparison) so kids are safe in schools!
Most supermarkets have plenty of fresh food, its better and cheaper to buy from farmers markets, but you can get by with the super chains( not going to get into the profiteering from them, save that for another day).
Fresh food is weirdly expensive in the US. Got to give the US props for being consistently expensive when it comes to health related expenses I guess.
It seems bizarre for such a rich country to have the priorities so backwards.
health and well being? Nah.
I feel like this thread is going really be “available in your part of the US.”
Grocery stores and populations are pretty varied across the US. What you can easily get in a San Francisco, Manhattan, or Boise grocery store can differ quite a bit.
Sure but there’s also tons of produce that has a low shelf life or doesn’t travel well (e.g. bruises easily) so you don’t find it anywhere except right where it’s grown.
e.g. I live where Pawpaws grow. I’ve never even found a whole one because they perish so fast.
Oh man - It always feels like the pawpaws just hang out for ages up in the canopy whole and unripe to me.
I should have said, a whole ripe one, yeah
My best advice would be once they start falling on their own try shaking them out of the tree. But don’t try shaking too hard because it’s completely possible to shake unripe ones out too…
The original intent was to learn about fruits and veggies that most americans would be unaware of or dont have access to eg. brazilian grapes, ube, drumstick, adzuki beans etc. but good point.
Drumstick 🤤🥺
You can eat the leaves too
I prefer the Kentucky Fried cultivar
Bananas other than the Cavendish and a greater variety of potatoes. There are supposed to be so many varieties of each out there, but we only get one banana and 3 or 4 potatoes.
The cherimoya is also pretty good from what I remember, so I would like to have that again for >$5.
The variety of bananas in Vietnam was great. I was going to put that here since they are impossible to import quickly enough.
Big fan of cherimoya ✋ Looked into ordering some online once, the price is insane
I had a cherimoya in Spain and I LOVED it. Impossible to find here in NA though :(
I got mine from a higher end grocery store (Wegmans) so something like that is your best bet. Keep searching!
Ooo, the Ugli Fruit aka Jamaican Tangelo was good too that I found there!
I have a hard time finding black currant
Isn’t blackcurrant illegal in the US? I remember hearing that somewhere anyway.
Such a shame, cassis (blackcurrant soda) makes for such a tasty drink.The plant itself is, you can get foods made with it.
I believe you can grow them as long as they are more than 150 feet from a white pine tree. The plants were originally banned because they were blamed for some sort of disease that jeopardized the lumber industry.
They are now legal to grow in many states. Unfortunately still not going to find it in a grocery store most likely. I grow my own in the backyard so I can have some at least part of the year. They’re perennial, very easy to grow, and produce a ton of berries. Gooseberries were banned for similar reasons, but are now also legal in many states.
Yes! As a Scandinavian living in the US: I would love to see black currant, red currant, and gooseberries in my grocery store.
And cloudberries! I want to taste cloudberries!
Yes! Forgot about those.
Gooseberries grow like crazy in Colorado, every other garden around here has at least one bush. Never seen them at a grocer though.
All those different kinds of banana. All we get is cabendish which is, like, the worst of all the amazing banana varieties.
It’s the red delicious of the banana world
We have cavandish and red bananas here but none of the more interesting ones like the giant hawaiian cultivar etc. So completely agreed.
You can’t import yuzu fruits or plants. All the yuzu in the US is descended from the 100 original plants imported before it was made illegal.
But really, I want soft cheeses…
Google says they taste like a mix of lemon, orange and grapefruit. Is that accurate?
More like lemon-lime-pomelo, but WDIY.
Sort of Meyer lemon with lime zest? The ones I got were not juicy at all, and what juice they had, I would prefer lime. But the zest of the yuzu is amazing, I do like it. You can buy yuzu sake, or a yuzu soda, to taste the flavor. Yuzu kosho is very different, savory and spicy, i made mine with grated fresh jalapenos and fermented it, absolutely divine.
I’ve had it here in Europe.
Personally, I think it tastes like a lemon that went bad. Like, kind of an uncanny valley thing. It’s close enough for me to think it’s one thing but far enough away from me to know it is definitely not what I want.
We can get yuzu fruit here (Florida) but couldn’t get the seeds to sprout, not sure how the trees are propagated. Anyway - the fruit is underwhelming, the zest is divine, I made a yuzu kosho, it is delicious.
Almost all fruit trees are clones. You’d need a cutting.
I’ve heard rumors that, while we see two kinds of mango in the US, there are many more varietals in India, and they’re all better. I’d like to have access to some of those; mangoes rock.
I suspect this is like our tomatoes. The tomatos you buy in stores were cultivated to be pretty, to get harvested by a machine, and to ship without getting damaged. Meanwhile, heirloom tomatoes will split their skin on a humid day, but they pack a ton more flavor in. The same is true for the vast majority of our fruit and veg. Actually ripened on plant produce doesn’t have a very long shelf life.
That’s the truth, not a rumor.
Oh there are like many varieties of mangoes z but hands down best is called hapoos or alphonso, it’s so so good. I recently found it EU due a colleague and tasted other varieties too such as kesar ( in think it means orange) , in could eat the peel also . The only place that you might get is Indian grocery stores in the areas specially now to end of julyi guess
Jackfruit
I’ve seen the big chain grocery stores carrying that around here. I have no idea how to eat it or anything though.
I remember getting one when one of the supermarkets around here carried them and theyre huge fruits. Probably 20 pounds of fruit that we ate from it and by the time we were done I never wanted to see another one again lol. I wouldn’t mind trying them again now but probably maybe just a pound not a whole fruit.
A restaurant out here had a great jackfruit sloppy Joe for vegetarians but I think they discontinued serving it.
I rarely see leeks, and when I do, they’re extremely expensive. Such a versatile vegetable that I wish more Americans knew about!
Where do you live where leeks are not common? Speaking for California here, they’re a common grocery store item.
Midwest here, I too can buy leeks any day of the week
Yeah, probably has more do to with proximity to at least a B tier grocery store. If your local grocer is Target, Walmart, or Family Dollar, then you’re only going to have access to the vegetables from Veggietales and bread from a plastic bag.
They grow naturally where I live. Not the giant ones like Farfetch’d carries, but when I was a kid, I loved digging them up in the woods and just eating them raw lol
I think that’s a local thing. My grocer carries them, and they’re always in stock. I line in the Midwest. But I seem to remember eating them a lot in Oregon, too?
Strawberries that taste like they did 10+ years ago?
Strawberries are so easy to grow that they are almost invasive.
If you leave them alone, they will overtake whatever is near them.
Each strawberry plant I have sends off multiple runners, with multiple nodes per runner.
It is a very high exponential growth rate.
You can start with 4 and have over 100 in 2 years.
Except now you have 100 plants that all taste like shit, because all strawberries now taste bland or sour.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t grown strawberries any time recently.
I know this because we have a random strawberry bush in a crack in front of our garage but it’s just from last year and only making tiny berries right now.
In a couple years maybe I’ll have good berries.
I am not aware of strawberry bushes. Are you sure we are still talking about strawberries?
It’s a plant lol
Uh, do you maybe live around Missouri? We have false strawberries here.
Does the plant have 3 pointy leaves like this?
That sounds like a wild strawberry. The berries won’t get. Offer year over year.
Wild strawberries are amazing. Sad they’re so hard to get a substantial amount of.
If you can’t grow your own or go to farmers market. Get them when it’s early in the season (I.e. now) as a big reason they usually taste like shit is because they are harvested unripe and then ripen in transit, which causes them to be light in colour, watery and have that white centre to them.
But early in the season they are /more likely/ to be allowed to ripen on the plant.
I’ve been eating loads of strawberries this past week from my local big chain supermarket and they have mostly been amazing (and cheap too)
Cumquats. We can get them here, but I rarely see them. What could be better than a little orange you can eat like a grape?
I think you meant kumquats, your version may be creamier though. ;P
Fruits from the genus Garcinia (mangosteen, achacha, and related). They’re supposedly some of the best tasting fruit ever, but very hard to find in the US aside from specialty growers in Cali or Miami.
Apricots. They’re available, but they’re always shitty.
I’d kill for apricots like you can get in the EU. Cheaper than here and they were delicious, not mealy and bland.
Agree. Good apricots are elusive. I have had them but 99% of the time they go straight from underripe to mealy.
Finger limes
Kid named limes: 🫤
No I said fingerprints
To this day I’m amazed they got that one by the censors. (Animaniacs. They’re being detectives. Yakko wears a sherlock hat, orders wakko to do one thing and then tells dot to look for prints. Dot comes back holding Prince out front of her off the ground with both her arms and says “Found him!” Yakko waggles his hands at her and says FINGERprints. Dot says “Ew!” And throws Prince down a laundry chute or a dumbwaiter or something)
Durians
Best I can do is fart on a cantaloupe. Take it or leave it.
They’re readily available in the LA area. You just need to visit an asian specialty market.
