Seldom seen in the Bay Area, this tropical fruit is enchanting local chefs
Seldom seen in the Bay Area, this tropical fruit is enchanting local chefs
Blog Article
When Paul Iglesias was preparing to open his Colombian restaurant Parche in Oakland in 2023, he took his team on a trip to Bogota, Colombia, to explore the capital’s restaurants, plazas and mercados. Immediately, one ingredient — ubiquitous in Bogota, yet unknown to the Bay Area team — stood out to the excursion members’ taste buds. Its fresh impression lingered throughout the trip and on the plane back home.
“We just couldn’t get away from lulo,” said Iglesias, who recalls tasting lulo on childhood trips to visit his relatives in Colombia.
Bay Area restaurants are slowly embracing the bright and sweet taste of lulo, a nightshade fruit with a citrus-like profile. It is most popular in Colombia, where it is predominantly consumed as juice or chopped or infused into other beverages. Lulo drinks have long been visible at traditional Colombian restaurants specializing in homestyle dishes in the Bay Area. Now, however, more Latin American-inspired restaurants and bars are making use of lulo’s unique flavor to accent cocktails and dishes.
Iglesias describes lulo’s flavor as the “trinity of acid”: It has notes of orange, lime and grapefruit that attack the palate in different stages. But despite its growing popularity among local chefs, lulo remains elusive: It’s not grown at wholesale scale in the U.S., although small amounts can be grown in Florida, where microclimate pockets make it possible to grow this nightshade. Because it isn’t imported in its fresh form in large amounts, chefs here must rely largely on lulo pulp.
Lulo is not unique to Colombia; it is also found in countries such as Brazil and Panama. In Ecuador it is known by the name naranjilla, Spanish for “little orange.” Lulo’s resemblance to that citrus is easy to see, given its amber-yellow skin. However, lulo’s squishy interior often has a green pulp and is studded with seeds, similar to a tomatillo. It can be as large as a persimmon or as small as a tangerine.
To Bay Area diners, Colombian cuisine may summon thoughts of arepas, stuffed corn flour patties; or bandeja paisa, a countryside breakfast platter of fried eggs, beans, sausage and plantains plated similarly to an English full breakfast. But Iglesias, whose mother is Colombian, argues that lulo — along with coffee, Colombia’s top crop — might be the most representative food from this country.
“Lulo shows you what the tropical terroir is like. It speaks volumes about the land,” he said.
At upscale Latin American-inspired restaurant Mägo in Oakland, chef Mark Liberman prepares dishes for his multi-course feasts like arepas garnished with carrot puree, tender potatoes with cabbage, and sea bass skewers cooked over a live flame. The beverage pairings for his tasting menu highlight lulo’s tropical flavor, which is distinct from more common fruits like mango and pineapple.
“Lulo has a unique flavor, like passion fruit candy, while adding acidity, which is a much needed element in cocktails,” Liberman said.
Mägo serves a cocktail made with lulo puree, green chile vodka from Alameda distillery St. George Spirits, tomatillo shrub and lime. A nonalcoholic alternative, tinted a dreamy, blueish purple, mixes butterfly pea flower tea with the nightshade.
Parche’s bar director Eric Syed found Lulo to have a perfect profile for cocktails, such as the rum-forward Como un Lulo, named after a flirty expression that can mean someone is “like a peach,” and the lulada, a nonalcoholic drink made with lime and sparkling water. The latter is based on popular drinks that, depending on the region, can combine a lulo base with other fruits, cacao, raw sugar and condensed milk.vegetarian alfredo recipe