The Luscious and Lovely Lychee

Growing up in Hawaii, our favorite fruits often came in brown paper bags from friends and neighbors. Freshly picked mangoes or mountain apples were some of my favorite treats. But the most popular has got to be the Chinese lychee.

Lychee (pronounced lie-CHEE) is one of the tropical fruits brought by the Chinese that have thrived in the warm weather of Hawaii. The trees with big bunches of ruby red clusters weighing down the branches were the envy of everyone in the neighborhood (and often the target of rascally kids who would just take some for an afternoon snack without asking <-- not me).

But with the growth of housing, it’s hard to find mango and lychee trees these days as yard make room for bigger homes. And for me, living on the Mainland meant I can only get these treats during visits home.

Lychees are one of those tropical fruits that are finding their way here from places like Southeast Asia or even Mexico. I’ve often seen fresh lychee at the Chinatown grocery stores, and were tempted to buy them but I shied away when I saw the lack of nice red color. To me, the light or pale color meant they were picked too soon, or the brown color meant they were past their prime.

Recently when shopping in Oakland’s Chinatown, one shop had a bunch of lychees and they were somewhat red like what I remembered growing up. So I decided to give them a try, especially since they were only $1.99 a pound. The bunch of lychee I bought weren’t super fresh (they start to decay once you snap them off the branch) but they were tender and a few were quite sweet. It brought me back to days when we’d sneak into the refrigerator and grab a bunch of lychee, peeling off the red shell to get to the white flesh and trying to gobble as many before our mother caught us eating that night’s dessert. Of course, we’d always get caught because the sweet lychee often meant sticky fingers and we’d often leave a trail.

So if you see them at the market, give them a try if they look nice and red. It’s one of those exotic fruits that will always be a special treat.