Autumn in New Zealand heralds the arrival of an egg-sized green fruit that drops from the trees in such abundance that it is often given to neighbors and colleagues by the bucket or even the wheelbarrow load. Only in extreme desperation do people buy any.
The fresh fruit, whose flesh is grated, jelly and cream-colored, is used in muffins, cakes, jams and smoothies and begins to appear on high-end menus every March – the beginning of autumn in the southern hemisphere. Off-season, it’s found in foods and drinks as varied as juices and wine, yogurt and kombucha, chocolate and popcorn.
This ubiquitous fruit is the feijoa (pronounced fee-jo-ah). Known in the United States as the pineapple guava, it was first brought to New Zealand from South America via France and California in the early 1900s.
Its spicy flavor is hard to describe, even for die-hard fans. But what is easy to point out is that like the kiwi, which originates from China, and the kiwi, a native bird, the feijoa has become for many here a quintessential symbol of New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as the country is known in the language of the native Maori.
“Even though it’s not from Aotearoa, it’s definitely something I associate with modern pataka Aotearoa, the modern food pantry,” said Monique Fiso, a chef of Maori and Samoan descent who has worked in top New York restaurants for more than five . years. Now back in New Zealand, she is a pioneer of modern Polynesian cuisine and often serves feijoas to her customers.
“It’s definitely one of my favorite fruits to work with, especially when we’re making sorbet, because it’s so refreshing,” she said. “Feijoas have a lot of versatility — you can bake with them, you can make ice cream with them, you can make jam with them. And they have a savory section too.”
Not every New Zealander loves feijoas, he warned. Sometimes customers will specify “just no feijoa” when booking. It’s a feeling he can’t understand. “I find it a little crazy,” he said. “I say, what’s your point? They are the best fruit ever!”
For fans, nothing can match the autumnal experience of eating an entire bucket of fresh fallen fruit.
“You can cut it in half and eat it with a spoon, or you can just bite into it with your teeth and suck out the contents,” said David Farrier, a New Zealand filmmaker and journalist living in Los Angeles, somewhat wistfully.
He often tried to explain feijoas to mystified Americans.
“I say it’s about the size of an egg – just imagine a green chicken egg with a little hat on top,” he said. “The taste; Honestly, it tastes like feijoa. And if you haven’t had feijoa, then you’re missing out.”
People have compared feijoas to guavas (a distant relative) and to a mix of pineapple and strawberry. Long before the craft beer revolution, a US newspaper article in 1912 stated: “He who drinks beer, thinks beer. But he who eats guava pineapple thinks of pineapple, raspberry and banana, all together.”
In New Zealand, however, one can drink beer and think feijoas. Last year, a feijoa-flavored sour beer, 8 Wired’s Wild Feijoa 2022, beat out more than 800 other breweries to win the top prize at the national beer awards. Its brewer, Soren Eriksen, is originally from Denmark but has lived in New Zealand for nearly two decades. He quickly went to Feijoas.
“I like them with the skin and everything,” he said, adding that the fermented feijoa skins gave his award-winning Belgian-style lambic beer its special flavor. “I wanted to make something that was traditional, but also uniquely Kiwi.”
Feijoas are native to Uruguay, the southern highlands of Brazil and a corner of northern Argentina. But they thrive in most of New Zealand, are easy to grow with little care and face few pests, and quickly found their way into local diets.
Rohan Bicknell, an Australian fruit and vegetable importer and exporter, has a front-row seat to the feijoa craze. He accidentally discovered feijoas in 2013 when a passion fruit shortage in his country forced him to order some from New Zealand. The suppliers also dropped a few hundred kilos of feijoas. Mr Bicknell thought they were delicious, and they sold out in a week, snapped up by New Zealanders.
“They become like a child,” he said. “Sometimes you have to listen to their childhood stories for about an hour. But it makes you smile, even if you hear it 200 times a week.”
Mr Bicknell now has 32 feijoa trees growing in his backyard in Brisbane, a 1,000-tree feijoa orchard in the southern Queensland highlands and an online store called Feijoa Addiction that mainly caters to the many New Zealanders living in Australia.
People in few other countries have the same level of flair for a fruit, he said. “Malaysians and durians and kiwis and feijoas are probably on the same addictive power,” he said. “Maybe Indians and mangoes.” Australians love mulberries, “but the connection isn’t as strong as between a feijoa and a person from New Zealand.”
Feijoas also evoke a special affinity, said Auckland author Charlotte Muru-Lanning. Because they don’t store well and are so plentiful, at some point in the season people start giving them away. Last year, she put them in a box on the sidewalk in front of her house with a sign that read “free feijoas.”
That aspect of feijoas makes them a vessel for the Māori concept of whakawhanaungatanga — building and strengthening relationships with those around you, said Ms Muru-Lanning, who is Māori. If you don’t have a feijoa tree, it’s the perfect excuse to meet a neighbor who does. If you have a lot, you can show that you care about others by sharing the fruit.
“I would feel like something has gone very wrong if I live in this country and have to buy feijoas,” he said.
