Little Saigon's fruit sellers seem to have the monopoly on rambutan–the golf ball-sized fruit native to Indonesia that resemble the dangling hairy testicles of a red, alien creature–charging upwards to $8-$9 dollars a pound for this way tangier cousin to the lychee.
I gather there's room for haggling there, and they probably expect it, but I'm not much of a haggler, so I was more than a little excited when I discovered Seafood City was selling them for $5.99/lb. They had them last week and they had them yesterday, but their stock is either dwindling or people like me are buying them up.
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If you're unfamiliar to the fruit, here's how to eat it: Dig into the skin of each fruit with both thumbs after starting them off with a slit made by knife. Like a Russian nesting doll, the two hemispheres will split and reveal a white translucent flesh. Grab the thing by your front teeth the whole thing will pop out. Then scrape the juicy meat from the almond-like pit. Spit out the pit. Repeat.
The texture of rambutan, for those who haven't had it, is exactly like a lychee. But the flavor is tangier, livelier, and much better if you can get it for cheap (well, cheaper than usual).
Seafood City Supermarket, 2180 Barranca Parkway, Irvine, CA 92606
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Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.