What vegetables and fruits do you wish were commonly available in the US?

I wish we had less selection, in general. My family lives in Spain, and I've also lived in France. This is just my observation, but American grocery stores clearly emphasize always having a consistent variety, whereas my Spanish family expects to eat higher quality produce seasonally. I suspect that this is a symptom of a wider problem, not the cause, but American groceries are just fucking awful by comparison, and so much more expensive too.

What I would give for an actual fresh greengrocer 😔
- Move to straya, plenty of jobs atm, free healthcare, not a lot of homes and no where near the consumer brand choice. But it also means rich are not as rich, and no guns (by comparison) so kids are safe in schools!
  Most supermarkets have plenty of fresh food, its better and cheaper to buy from farmers markets, but you can get by with the super chains( not going to get into the profiteering from them, save that for another day).
Fresh food is weirdly expensive in the US. Got to give the US props for being consistently expensive when it comes to health related expenses I guess.
It seems bizarre for such a rich country to have the priorities so backwards.
health and well being? Nah.

I feel like this thread is going really be “available in your part of the US.”

Grocery stores and populations are pretty varied across the US. What you can easily get in a San Francisco, Manhattan, or Boise grocery store can differ quite a bit.

Sure but there's also tons of produce that has a low shelf life or doesn't travel well (e.g. bruises easily) so you don't find it anywhere except right where it's grown.
e.g. I live where Pawpaws grow. I've never even found a whole one because they perish so fast.
- Oh man - It always feels like the pawpaws just hang out for ages up in the canopy whole and unripe to me.
The original intent was to learn about fruits and veggies that most americans would be unaware of or dont have access to eg. brazilian grapes, ube, drumstick, adzuki beans etc. but good point.
- Drumstick 🤤🥺

Bananas other than the Cavendish and a greater variety of potatoes. There are supposed to be so many varieties of each out there, but we only get one banana and 3 or 4 potatoes.

The cherimoya is also pretty good from what I remember, so I would like to have that again for >$5.

The variety of bananas in Vietnam was great. I was going to put that here since they are impossible to import quickly enough.
Big fan of cherimoya ✋ Looked into ordering some online once, the price is insane
I had a cherimoya in Spain and I LOVED it. Impossible to find here in NA though :(
- I got mine from a higher end grocery store (Wegmans) so something like that is your best bet. Keep searching!
  Ooo, the Ugli Fruit aka Jamaican Tangelo was good too that I found there!

I have a hard time finding black currant

Isn't blackcurrant illegal in the US? I remember hearing that somewhere anyway.
Such a shame, cassis (blackcurrant soda) makes for such a tasty drink.
- The plant itself is, you can get foods made with it.
- They are now legal to grow in many states. Unfortunately still not going to find it in a grocery store most likely. I grow my own in the backyard so I can have some at least part of the year. They're perennial, very easy to grow, and produce a ton of berries. Gooseberries were banned for similar reasons, but are now also legal in many states.
Yes! As a Scandinavian living in the US: I would love to see black currant, red currant, and gooseberries in my grocery store.
- And cloudberries! I want to taste cloudberries!
- Gooseberries grow like crazy in Colorado, every other garden around here has at least one bush. Never seen them at a grocer though.

All those different kinds of banana. All we get is cabendish which is, like, the worst of all the amazing banana varieties.

It’s the red delicious of the banana world
We have cavandish and red bananas here but none of the more interesting ones like the giant hawaiian cultivar etc. So completely agreed.

You can't import yuzu fruits or plants. All the yuzu in the US is descended from the 100 original plants imported before it was made illegal.

But really, I want soft cheeses...

We can get yuzu fruit here (Florida) but couldn't get the seeds to sprout, not sure how the trees are propagated. Anyway - the fruit is underwhelming, the zest is divine, I made a yuzu kosho, it is delicious.
- Almost all fruit trees are clones. You'd need a cutting.
Google says they taste like a mix of lemon, orange and grapefruit. Is that accurate?
- More like lemon-lime-pomelo, but WDIY.
- Sort of Meyer lemon with lime zest? The ones I got were not juicy at all, and what juice they had, I would prefer lime. But the zest of the yuzu is amazing, I do like it. You can buy yuzu sake, or a yuzu soda, to taste the flavor. Yuzu kosho is very different, savory and spicy, i made mine with grated fresh jalapenos and fermented it, absolutely divine.
- I've had it here in Europe.
  Personally, I think it tastes like a lemon that went bad. Like, kind of an uncanny valley thing. It's close enough for me to think it's one thing but far enough away from me to know it is definitely not what I want.

I've heard rumors that, while we see two kinds of mango in the US, there are many more varietals in India, and they're all better. I'd like to have access to some of those; mangoes rock.

I suspect this is like our tomatoes. The tomatos you buy in stores were cultivated to be pretty, to get harvested by a machine, and to ship without getting damaged. Meanwhile, heirloom tomatoes will split their skin on a humid day, but they pack a ton more flavor in. The same is true for the vast majority of our fruit and veg. Actually ripened on plant produce doesn't have a very long shelf life.
That's the truth, not a rumor.
Oh there are like many varieties of mangoes z but hands down best is called hapoos or alphonso, it's so so good. I recently found it EU due a colleague and tasted other varieties too such as kesar ( in think it means orange) , in could eat the peel also . The only place that you might get is Indian grocery stores in the areas specially now to end of julyi guess

Jackfruit

I remember getting one when one of the supermarkets around here carried them and theyre huge fruits. Probably 20 pounds of fruit that we ate from it and by the time we were done I never wanted to see another one again lol. I wouldn't mind trying them again now but probably maybe just a pound not a whole fruit.
- A restaurant out here had a great jackfruit sloppy Joe for vegetarians but I think they discontinued serving it.
I've seen the big chain grocery stores carrying that around here. I have no idea how to eat it or anything though.

Strawberries that taste like they did 10+ years ago?

Strawberries are so easy to grow that they are almost invasive.
If you leave them alone, they will overtake whatever is near them.
Each strawberry plant I have sends off multiple runners, with multiple nodes per runner.
It is a very high exponential growth rate.
You can start with 4 and have over 100 in 2 years.
- Except now you have 100 plants that all taste like shit, because all strawberries now taste bland or sour.
- I know this because we have a random strawberry bush in a crack in front of our garage but it's just from last year and only making tiny berries right now.
  In a couple years maybe I'll have good berries.
If you can't grow your own or go to farmers market. Get them when it's early in the season (I.e. now) as a big reason they usually taste like shit is because they are harvested unripe and then ripen in transit, which causes them to be light in colour, watery and have that white centre to them.
But early in the season they are /more likely/ to be allowed to ripen on the plant.
I've been eating loads of strawberries this past week from my local big chain supermarket and they have mostly been amazing (and cheap too)
Wild strawberries are amazing. Sad they're so hard to get a substantial amount of.

Fruits from the genus Garcinia (mangosteen, achacha, and related). They're supposedly some of the best tasting fruit ever, but very hard to find in the US aside from specialty growers in Cali or Miami.

I rarely see leeks, and when I do, they’re extremely expensive. Such a versatile vegetable that I wish more Americans knew about!

Where do you live where leeks are not common? Speaking for California here, they’re a common grocery store item.
- Midwest here, I too can buy leeks any day of the week
They grow naturally where I live. Not the giant ones like Farfetch'd carries, but when I was a kid, I loved digging them up in the woods and just eating them raw lol
I think that's a local thing. My grocer carries them, and they're always in stock. I line in the Midwest. But I seem to remember eating them a lot in Oregon, too?

Durians

Best I can do is fart on a cantaloupe. Take it or leave it.
They’re readily available in the LA area. You just need to visit an asian specialty market.

Apricots. They're available, but they're always shitty.

I'd kill for apricots like you can get in the EU. Cheaper than here and they were delicious, not mealy and bland.

Agree. Good apricots are elusive. I have had them but 99% of the time they go straight from underripe to mealy.

Cumquats. We can get them here, but I rarely see them. What could be better than a little orange you can eat like a grape?

I think you meant kumquats, your version may be creamier though. ;P

Finger limes

Kid named limes: 🫤
- No I said fingerprints

Freshly cut hearts of palm.

We have the canned ones which arent bad but now im curious what the fresh cut ones are like
Add fresh bamboo shoots too. Wonderful delicate flavor. Oh, and banana flowers.

the Gros Michel banana. I never had the chance to try one before they were wiped out.

edit: and the Hua Moa banana, because it looks silly

I'll tack on apple bananas. They're tiny and taste like an apple and a banana had babies.
- Apple bananas are freaking amazing. I'm always so happy when we score some at the Asian grocery. That little pop of acidity makes all the difference.
The Gros Michel isn't fully extinct, you can still buy them as delicacies. But from what I've heard they aren't that great, just different to the Cavendish

Huckleberries. I never see them as a commonly available thing in stores, eaten alongside things like bananas, which sucks, because bananas are some plant grown like a thousand miles away and I can go outside and go gather my own huckleberries if I wanted. It should be really easy, I live in an area where they grow.

So, that, but also just more broadly I kind of think that after learning enough about different regional botany, we've both crippled basically every ecosystem with a bunch of invasive species, we've crushed the human experience into a very narrow square set of experiences which includes the biodiversity that you can see around wherever you are, and we've made food worse. Because we're not using local plants for our food, you see, we're just using a bunch of generic ingredients that are sort of unnaturally made out to be universal across entire hemispheres, maybe even across the globe. No regional variation outside of specialty goods, only Mcdonald's.

The thread's gonna be against this opinion broadly, I think, but there's not like, it's not just the huckleberry, you understand, there's a lot more out there that you don't know about, both edible and not.

Huckleberries. I never see them as a commonly available thing in stores,
Visit the Nordics in June-July.
Markets full of them.
Hell, you don't need to buy any, just walk into any forest and start picking.

I'd love it if Stephen Hawking and Freddy Mercury were alive again

rimshot

Guavas

I’ve got a tree in my yard that pumps out hundreds a few times a year. I have to give them away. SoCal
- Give me 🥺
We have guava in the stores here in Florida but I've seen rhubarb twice in half a century.
- I've seen rhubarb in the Midwest fwiw
- Holy cow, I hate rhubarb. We always had it in the garden and my grandma used to bake cakes with it. Thos sweet cakes would be sooo good, but that pos plant always ruined them to non-edible garbage. At least for me, some people like that taste, though. (Europe)
- I was born, raised, and currently live in Florida. The guavas in Florida supermarkets are closer-tasting to plastic than the guavas I've had in the Caribbean.
- I have a 6 foot by 6 foot patch of rhubarb in Wisconsin that's completely gone to seed because I don't have enough freezer space to keep any more of it. It makes a great simple syrup for cocktails and of course classics like crumble and pie.

Huckleberry but apparently they are really difficult to farm.

I’ll be your huckleberry

Fresh bamboo shoots.

I’m visiting Bangkok currently, so: definitely custard apples and mangosteens. Snake fruits and guava and the specific type of tangerines they use as “oranges” over here, too. And the green skinned “sweet oranges” which are also awesome. And like all the various types of mangos you can get in Thailand.

Also, I’m taking “available” to mean “purchasable, and ripened mostly on the vine”, because the stuff that gets shipped internationally is picked SUPER unripe just so it doesn’t spoil before sale.

Basically, I would fucking LOVE it if there was a Thai grocery in my city that flagrantly violated the Washington Treaty.

For real though, if you ever get the chance to try a ripe custard apple, they’re absolutely fucking delicious. Can’t recommend it enough.

I always wanted to try the cashew fruit ever since I discovered it was a fruit.

Allegedly it's too juicy and fragile to import.

My dad used to pick some up when he took our dog for a walk, and the way I would realize he had done so was by my suddenly feeling queasy due to the smell.
I hope you get the chance to try it sometime, but if you don't know that it might also not be a bad thing :)
- Ive tried the juice which tasted weakly citrusy with a strong nutty flavor. Is that anything like the fresh fruit tastes?

I'm Canadian but for some reason you never see tangerines anymore. Plenty of other citrus but not tangerines

I also would like to see pink and red fleshed apples in the store. And pawpaws. I sometimes get some from my local farmer friend and they are SO good but hard to come by.

Persimmons. I know they're available at least in the bay area because I had them when I lived there briefly, but have never found them in my regular home in the pacific northwest. I also don't remember them as a kid growing up in Tennessee.

I get them in Texas from the Korean market. I don't know that they're available year round though.
I'd be surprised if you couldn't find any via Asian markets in the Pacific Northwest.
- Oooh I haven't checked there, thank you!
Those are very late season fruit. I wasn't aware they weren't available up north. Look for them starting in October, I think.
We have persimmons in Michigan

Any of them before soil depletion and banana blight. Fruits and veggies tasted so much better in the 80s. Melons in particular taste lifeless now. Once in a while I strike gold at the local farmer's market or in our own garden.

And tomatoes. Tomatoes used to be amazing. Even the worst ones were amazing.
Now they just taste like “wet”. If you want a good tomato you have to track down lovingly and carefully bred heirloom plants and grow them yourself.
- Nah. Even a Burpee is good.
  The main thing that ruins store tomatoes is that they pick them green and breed them for travel.
  Pretty much any tomato plant that you buy will be bred for taste and resistance.
  That said, heirlooms do have all kinds of crazy flavors and differences.
  I bought a rainbow tomato seed pack, it had like 7-10 different varieties, I don’t actually remember.
  The white tomatoes were a trip, with your eyes open they taste tart, but with your eyes closed they just taste like a really good tomato.
- OMG, yes. The flavor "wet" has been added to my lexicon.
Melons taste just as good to me now as the 80s or 90s.

After having açai I wish it was easier to get those than blueberries. They're basically the same, but they actually have flavor without needing to be turned into a sauce or jam.

Nashi, or Japanese pears. Had some in Japan last year, and they were fantastic. Texture more like a soft apple, taste was great.

Google tells me asian pears are basically the same and if thats true, then they're one of the best fruits I have had.
- Round, yellow, rough skin? Crisp like an apple, but sweet like a pear (less tangy than an apple)? If that's what you mean, 100% agree. They're fairly common, IME; we got them all the time in PA, and see them frequent-ish in the Midwest.

Beans.

Why is this downvoted? There are more kinds of beans than you can buy in the typical American supermarket. Tell me you've never been to an ethnic grocery store without telling me 😒
- People probably instantly took their meaning to be mundane beans eg. pinto. Adzuki beans or at least the red paste desserts made from them, I bet most people here haven't tried but would like.

Green curry should have Thai eggplant yet I can only get it with that from one Thai restaurant I know

I’ve found Thai eggplant at 99 Ranch stores.

Fiddleheads

Depends where you live and if you know where to look. There are plenty near places I have lived. Usually near streams.

Thin-walled bell peppers like you find in Japan and China. Even the local Asian grocery stores don't sell them, and I can find pretty much anything else.

Like the Shephard peppers?
- No, very different. These are like miniature bell peppers with thin walls. Shepherd peppers are not so small and have thick walls.
  Takii's New Ace is a variety I've grown.