I saw these strawberries at Sun Fruits in the basement of Mitsukoshi in Ginza. I was taking our visiting American friend Dee for a whirl around the DepaChika, the department store basement food plaza. I thought she'd like to see some of Japan's infamous that-must-be-a-mistake overpriced fruit. It turned out she hadn't heard of the 200-dollar cantaloupes, and so was all the more surprised by them.
I had never heard of these white strawberries, called Scent of First Love. Yeah, for 12 bucks a pop, they should have a whimsical name. They should have a whole back story. Like they used to be regular strawberries but then they were bitten by vampire strawberries... Actually, the back story has something to do with a scientist; the Yamanashi producer is called Miyoshi Agri Tech. Mmm, agritech.
Tokyo Food Life has some nice pictures of the anemic strawberries at a branch of Sun Fruits in Tokyo Midtown and gives a rundown of the likes and dislikes flavor profiles of a dozen intriguingly named berries.
We used to have white forest strawberries growing naturally in our garden in France. Bizarrely, they tasted like artificial strawberry flavouring...
ReplyDeleteI can't believe anyone would pay $200 for a cantaloupe OR $12 for a strawberry. I found this earlier, and it talks all about such oddities: white strawberries. Interesting, right!
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