Banana Hall of Fame celebrates banana industry

In celebration of its 125th Bananaversary, Dole Food in the US recently established a National Banana Hall of Fame to honour culinary and cultural institutions that have helped to establish bananas as one of the world’s most popular and most purchased fruit.

William Goldfield, Dole’s communications director, said Dole was aware that it could never have made it to their banana quasquicentennial

– or 125th year of growing and marketing bananas – without the help of other banana ambassadors with a similar passion for the fruit and who have helped to turn bananas into a universal symbol of simple nutrition, goodness, flavour and fun.

The first three inductees into the Dole Banana Hall of Fame were also announced.

The first is Brennan’s, the New Orleans French Quarter restaurant in the US, which created the worldfamous Bananas Foster dessert.

The legendary flaming dessert came into existence back in 1951 when the Brenna family challenged their chef de cuisine, Paul Blangé, to create a signature dish using bananas for a special evening honouring a family friend, Richard Foster.

The resulting tableside masterpiece has been a local institution and Brennan’s most popular menu item ever since, filling the French Quarter restaurant with the smell with caramelised bananas, brown sugar and butter. The restaurant uses more than 17t of bananas a year to satisfy the demand for this dish. The City of Latrobe in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the Banana Split and home of the Banana Split Festival, is the second inductee. The banana split, according to the press statement, was developed by David Strickler, a 23-year-old soda jerk who worked a Latrobe drugstore. In 1904, Stickler made banana and dessert history when he cut a banana lengthwise, added vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream, and topped it with syrups, marshmallow, chopped nuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

Within a few years, the banana split had become a national phenomenon and Stickler an ice cream industry legend. An official market was erected on the official site of the original pharmacy in 2013, and the Great American Banana Split Celebration was launched, drawing tens of thousands of banana and dessert lovers every August.

Bobby Banana, the seven-foot-long banana mascot of Dole Food Company, who has been making healthy eating and living fun for kids for close to 40 years, was the third inductee.

Dole plans on announcing more inductees throughout

2024.

SUPPLIED The Bananas Foster dessert was created in 1951 for Richard Foster.