‘The Tesla of strawberries’ with a sweet scent and £36 price tag
After searching high and low for the coveted new Japanese strawberry I had read about in the glossy food magazines, I finally found a vendor.
“I’d like a punnet of your Omakases,” I told the seller at Eli’s farm-to-table stand in Grand Central Market, tucked away from the Manhattan railway station’s commuting hordes.
“We don’t just have them out on the shelves,” he replied, indignantly, before putting my name down on a list and telling me to come back tomorrow.
I balked as I examined the receipt, then handed over $50 (£36) for a box of 10.
Nicknamed the “Tesla of strawberries”, the luxury fruit has become New York’s most in-demand new produce – and one with an incredible back story.
They are grown in the world’s first and largest indoor vertical strawberry farm (vertically stacked layers of crops in a controlled environment), a 15-minute drive from the City in New
Jersey, the Garden State. When Hiroki Koga, the chief executive of Oishii farm, moved from Japan to the US in 2015 and tasted their “flavourless” home-grown offerings for the first time he was severely disappointed.
He made it his mission to provide American consumers with better, travelling back to Japan and tastetesting nearly 50 varieties before settling on one.
The Omakase (which translates roughly in English as “I leave it to the chef ”) variety was the winner. Containing twice as much sugar as an average US strawberry it was unmatched for succulence and sweetness.
The Omakases only grow in winter in Japan on a “thin slice of land”, but the New Jersey operation has recreated those conditions in an indoor setting, which they say enables the strawberries to ripen at an “ideal speed”.
Mr Koga and a team of experts have even managed to simulate the weather conditions of a “perfect day” in the Japanese foothills, regulating temperature, as well as humidity, CO2 and wind speed. He calls them the “world’s happiest strawberries”.
Oishii claims to be the first indoor vertical farm to successfully use real bees to pollinate produce – “something long believed to be impossible’, the company boasts. Traditionally, mostly vegetables have been grown in verticals, in part because they do not require pollinating, in part because fruit is difficult to grow indoors due to their long cultivation cycles.
The New York Times praises the “heady scent” of the strawberries, while Chef Kazushige Suzuki, of Sushi Ginza Onodera, says they are unlike any strawberry he has tasted over the years. They have quickly become a favourite of Michelin-starred chefs in New York, who have begun offering them in their desserts.
Buyers are advised to eat the berry whole – do not cut them with a knife as this dilutes the flavour.
The first sweet taste almost reminds me of a rosé wine. I was expecting a little tartness, but it never came. Just a sugary, smooth and creamy finish.
The second thing I notice is how few seeds the flesh has, nothing that could get stuck in your teeth.
Most surprisingly the outside is almost as soft as the inside, which is almost white.