Vietnamese fruit, and the month each one is worth buying

Vietnamese fruit is the cheapest luxury in the country. A kilo of mangosteen runs 60,000 to 120,000 dong, which is 2 to 5 US dollars at about 26,000 dong to the dollar. The rambutan beside it was on a tree the day before. None of it spent three weeks in a refrigerated container to reach you.

The catch is the calendar. Fruit here is seasonal in a way supermarket fruit has trained most visitors out of expecting. A stall in February is a different stall from the same one in June.

What is in season, and when?

Vietnamese fruit peaks between May and September, when the southern harvests overlap and every market doubles in size. The cool months are quieter rather than empty. Pomelo runs to December, milk fruit peaks in January, and dragon fruit is on the stalls in all 12 of them. The north and the highlands keep their own calendars again.

What does a kilo actually cost?

Between 20,000 and 120,000 dong a kilo for almost everything. Vietnamese fruit is priced by season rather than by rarity. The spread inside one fruit's own months beats the spread between two different fruits. First-of-season mangosteen costs twice what the same kilo costs six weeks later.

At about 26,000 dong to the dollar, most of that table is one to two dollars a kilo. The trip cost guide puts it against everything else a day here costs, and fruit is the line that never moves the total.

Is durian worth trying once?

Once, yes, and you will know within a mouthful. Durian is custard-textured, intensely sweet and smells like an argument. Vietnamese eaters treat it as the best fruit in the country, and it splits visitors down the middle.

• Season — May to August in the southeast, with Dak Lak running later into September.
• Price — 90,000 dong a kilo for common varieties, past 250,000 for early Ri6, and you pay for the whole fruit including a shell that is most of the weight.
• How to buy — ask for it opened, and eat it there — a cut durian loses its texture within hours.
• Where you cannot take it — hotels, airlines and most buses ban it outright, and the signs at the lift are not decorative.

Why does everyone say mangosteen first?

Because it converts people who thought they did not care about fruit. Thick purple shell, white segments inside, sweet with a clean sourness behind it, and nothing like the frozen version sold abroad.

• Season — May to August, and it disappears completely by about October.
• Price — 60,000 to 120,000 dong a kilo, dearest in May and cheapest by August.
• How to pick — press the shell gently: it should give slightly. Rock hard means old, and the segments inside will be translucent and bitter.
• How to open — twist rather than cut, or press with both thumbs until the shell splits.

How do you get into a rambutan?

With a thumbnail, in about two seconds. Squeeze the hairy shell until it splits, peel it back and the white flesh comes out whole, around a stone that does not separate cleanly.

• Season — June to September, mostly from the delta.
• Price — 25,000 to 45,000 dong a kilo, which makes it the cheapest good fruit of the summer.
• How to pick — red with green-tipped hairs is fresh; all-brown hairs mean it has been off the tree for days, and the flesh will have started to ferment.
• What it tastes like — lychee, with a firmer bite.

When are lychees and longans in?

Lychee for six weeks and longan for about ten, and both are northern before they are southern. Bac Giang province supplies most of the country's lychee, and the season is short enough that missing it by a fortnight means missing it entirely.

• Lychee — May to July, 40,000 to 90,000 dong a kilo, dearest in the first fortnight.
• Longan — July to September, 40,000 to 70,000, and available dried at any time of year.
• How to pick — heavy for its size and unbroken skin; a cracked lychee has been picked too long.
• Where — the north for lychee, both north and delta for longan.

Is dragon fruit as bland as it looks?

Mostly, and that is why it is everywhere. White-fleshed thanh long is mild, faintly sweet and mainly texture; the red-fleshed variety is sweeter and stains everything it touches.

• Season — all year, best May to September, and Binh Thuan province grows most of it.
• Price — 20,000 to 40,000 dong a kilo, the cheapest thing on the stall.
• How to eat it — halve it and scoop, or peel and slice into a smoothie, which is where most of it goes.
• Why it is on every stall — it keeps for a week and travels well, which no other fruit here does.

What do you do with a jackfruit?

Buy it in a tray, unless you have an afternoon and a knife you do not mind ruining. A whole jackfruit weighs 10 kg or more and the latex inside sticks to everything.

• Season — March to August for the fresh fruit, though trays of prepared flesh sell all year.
• Price — 30,000 to 60,000 dong a kilo whole, or 20,000 to 40,000 for a tray of segments.
• How it tastes — sweet, dense and slightly synthetic, like tinned pineapple crossed with banana.
• Where else you meet it — in che, dried as crisps, and green in salads, which the salads guide covers.

What is xoai, and when is green mango better?

Mango is the fruit Vietnam sells twice: ripe as a fruit and unripe as a snack, and the unripe version is the one visitors underrate.

• Season — March to June, at its best in the delta around Cao Lanh.
• Price — 30,000 to 70,000 dong a kilo ripe, less for the green ones sold for snacking.
• How to pick — ripe should give under a thumb at the stem end and smell of itself; a mango with no smell will never develop one.
• Green mango — sold cut in a bag with muoi ot, sour and crunchy rather than unripe-tasting, and the standard afternoon snack.

Why is pomelo sold by the fruit?

Because a buoi weighs one to two kilos and half of that is skin. It is the one fruit here quoted per piece rather than per kilo, which changes how you bargain for it.

• Season — August to December, from Bien Hoa and the delta.
• Price — 40,000 to 90,000 dong a fruit, more for the Nam Roi and Da Xanh varieties.
• How to pick — heavy for its size with taut skin; a light one has dried out inside.
• How it is eaten — segmented and picked apart by hand, often with muoi ot, and in the salad the goi guide covers.

How do you drink a milk fruit?

You roll it first. Vu sua, literally milk breast, is the December-to-March fruit of the delta. The flesh inside turns liquid if you work it in your hands before opening it.

• Season — December to March, best around Vinh Long.
• Price — 40,000 to 80,000 dong a kilo.
• How to eat it — roll between the palms until it softens, cut the top off and squeeze; the white flesh comes out sweet and faintly milky.
• What not to eat — the skin and the layer directly under it, which are bitter and latexy.

Is custard apple worth what it costs?

For one, yes, and it is the dearest of the ordinary fruits. Mang cau is scaly and green outside, and inside it is soft white segments around black seeds, closer to a dessert than to fruit.

• Season — June to September, and Tay Ninh is the province it comes from.
• Price — 60,000 to 100,000 dong a kilo, which buys three or four fruits.
• How to pick — the scales should be opening slightly and the fruit give under light pressure; rock hard means days away.
• How to eat it — break it open with your thumbs and eat the segments off the seeds, which are not edible.

What is chanh day for?

Sauce, drinks and the smell. Passion fruit is rarely eaten on its own here. Cooks spoon it over ice with sugar, blend it into juice, or turn it into a dressing for seafood.

• Season — all year, best June to October, grown in Da Lat and Gia Lai.
• Price — 30,000 to 50,000 dong a kilo.
• How to pick — wrinkled skin is ripe, not old; a smooth glossy passion fruit is under-ripe and sour.
• Where you meet it — in every juice bar, and in the dressing on a plate of grilled squid.

Why is guava eaten unripe here?

Because that is when it has texture. Oi is picked hard and green, sliced, and eaten with chilli salt, which is a different fruit entirely from the soft pink guava sold elsewhere. Both kinds grow here: the pale, crisp, white-fleshed one is what a street cart sells, and the pink-fleshed variety turns up ripe in juice.

• Season — all year, everywhere.
• Price — 20,000 to 35,000 dong a kilo, among the cheapest things on any stall.
• How to pick — firm, pale green and heavy; softness here is a defect rather than ripeness.
• How it is eaten — sliced into wedges with muoi ot, from a bag or a cart, and the seeds are left behind.

What does Da Lat grow that the delta cannot?

Everything temperate, because it sits at 1,500 m. The Da Lat highlands supply the fruit that will not grow in the heat, and it arrives in the lowland markets trucked and priced accordingly.

• Strawberries — November to April, 80,000 to 200,000 dong a kilo, and the reason Da Lat's stalls sell jam.
• Persimmons — September to November, sold fresh or wind-dried, which concentrates them into something like a date.
• Avocado — the bo that ends up blended with condensed milk in every smoothie stall in the country.
• Artichoke and cool-climate vegetables — the same fields, and the reason the town smells of tea and greenhouses.

What is on the stalls when nothing is in season?

The cool months are thinner rather than empty, and they have their own list. From about November to April the southern crops are over. Four things carry the stalls — dragon fruit, pomelo, milk fruit and guava — plus whatever Da Lat sends down from the highlands.

Milk fruit is the one to look for. Vu sua peaks between December and March around Vinh Long, and it is drunk rather than eaten. Roll it between your palms until the inside liquefies, cut the top and squeeze. Persimmons and strawberries arrive from Da Lat in the same months. Both cost several times the delta price, because both are trucked down.

What you will also see is imported fruit — apples, pears, oranges and grapes, mostly Chinese, sold in the same markets at similar prices. Imported fruit is not a scam and it is not local. It is why a February stall can look busier than a July one while carrying half as much Vietnamese fruit.

What should you try first?

Mangosteen first, if the month allows it. It converts people who thought they did not care about fruit. White segments sit inside a thick purple shell, sweet and slightly sharp, and it is nothing like the frozen version sold abroad. Expect 60,000 to 120,000 dong a kilo, dearest in May and cheapest by August.

After that: rambutan for the price, at 25,000 to 45,000 dong a kilo. Milk fruit for the texture, and durian once, to find out which side you are on. A whole durian runs from about 90,000 dong a kilo for the common varieties to past 250,000 for a good Ri6 early in the season. A good deal of the rest arrives blended instead, which the smoothies and juices guide covers.

How do you buy it without being overcharged?

Ask the price per kilo before anything goes on the scale. Fruit is sold by weight for almost everything except pomelo and jackfruit. The question "bao nhieu mot ky?", how much a kilo, is the whole transaction.

Two things to know. Tourist-district prices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City run 2 to 3 times those on a residential street five minutes away. Haggling is normal there and out of place in a neighbourhood market, where the price is the price.

The second is the basket vendors who offer you the shoulder pole for a photograph. The photo is free and the kilo of fruit that follows it is not, at a price nobody agreed. The shopping guide covers how the haggling works more generally.

Is fruit safe to eat here?

Whole fruit you peel yourself is about as safe as food gets. Nothing has touched the flesh, and the skin does the work that a wash cannot.

Pre-cut fruit is the version to think about. It has been handled, rinsed in water of unknown quality and often stood at room temperature for hours. The street food safety guide is blunt that this class of food, not the grill, is where the risk lives.

The bag of cut mango with chilli salt is still one of the best things on any Vietnamese street. It is a small deliberate risk rather than no risk.

Most of it is sold from a shoulder yoke, and the street vendor guide covers how that trade works.

What is the chilli salt for?

Muoi ot is salt, chilli and often sugar, and it is the standard dip for sour or under-ripe fruit rather than a novelty. Green mango, guava and unripe pineapple are all eaten this way. The salt makes the sourness read as flavour rather than as a mistake.

In the south you will also meet muoi tom, which adds dried shrimp powder and is a Tay Ninh speciality. It sounds wrong with fruit and is not.

Where does the fruit come from?

The Mekong Delta grows most Vietnamese fruit, and the country eats it within a day or two of picking. The orchards around Cai Be and Vinh Long are a standard stop on a delta trip.

Fruit at a delta market in July is better and cheaper than the same fruit in Ho Chi Minh City that afternoon, often by half. The three-day delta route runs through the middle of it, and the markets guide covers the hours those stalls keep.

Da Lat is the exception. At 1,500 m it grows what the delta cannot. Strawberries run from November, persimmons through the autumn, and the avocados blended into smoothies everywhere else in the country come from here.

How does fruit fit a Vietnamese meal?

At the end of it, and instead of a pudding. Vietnamese fruit is the dessert course here rather than an accompaniment to one. A Vietnamese meal that finishes with anything sweet usually finishes with cut fruit. That is why the dessert case in a restaurant is often thin.

The sweet dishes that do exist mostly contain fruit rather than replacing it. Che is built on jackfruit, longan and coconut as often as on beans, as the dessert guide sets out. The what to eat guide puts both in the order a first trip meets them.