Back in May, I wrote a silly little post about one of my many Thai food obsessions: mangosteens. In it, I argued how it was the best fruit in the world, and it turned out to be one of my most read posts in She’s in Love with the World’s existence! Anyone who has ever tried them seemed to agree: simply put, mangosteens just rock.

However, for as many mangosteens supporters I had out there, I had two quite vocal nonbelievers: my good friend and foodie extraordinaire Chris Preovolos, and one of my own kind, my father.

When I met up with Dad in Jerusalem for a weekend right after leaving Bangkok, one of the first things he said to me was, “Sarah. Mangosteens? An entire blog post about ONE fruit? How dumb!”

I tried to convince him otherwise; put into words how delicious the fruit was and how many people agreed with me. I knew both of them would love this fruit, but they just weren’t having or hearing any of it. I resigned myself to waiting until I returned to the United States to go on a quest to find the illegal fruit in the place where you go to find all things illegal (counterfeiting, anyone?), New York City’s Chinatown.

Fast-forward to last Sunday. Chris and I go on expeditions for new cuisines fairly often, and on this day he was itching to try BaoHaus’ claim to fame for selling Taiwanese street food. Before we would make it there, however, I was a woman on a mission. Walking down Canal Street and weaving through the produce streets, I was coming up empty handed and discouraged within 10 minutes. Chris and I stumbled upon the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory and got scoops of mango and banana ice cream before moving on to finding a Thai grocer. He told us that mangosteens were out of season, but he had canned juice in his fridge (and it’s now in mine). After chatting a little bit more with the grocer who thought I could speak fluent Thai and a customer who grew up in Bangkok, I picked up some karee curry paste — I’m also determined how to make pad pong li gai (my favorite dish) —  and we headed back out to resume our quest.

Honestly, it took all of about an anti-climactic 10 minutes before I found mangosteens packed up in white-netted bags. While they weren’t on display as prominently as the mangos, durian and dragonfruits, they weren’t exactly hard to find either. But, they were hard. And expensive ($7 per pound!). I knew they were headed out of season as I was leaving Bangkok back in June and the sweet little grocer who thought I could speak Thai also told us the same thing. But I was excited, so I bought some.

After wrestling to open up the little piece of heaven for Chris, I made him try one. It wasn’t as great as they are when in season in Southeast Asia, but still not awful either (it’s probably impossible for a fruit that good to ever taste bad, let’s be real). A few days later, my Dad came back from a business trip and I did the same thing…only, to open this one, we had to use a butcher knife and a meat tenderizer. My mom swears they were petrified and wearily looked on as my Dad popped one of the pieces into his mouth and finally agreed to what I knew all along…

…Despite the fruit being out of season he said, “Wow, I can see how I really would like this.”

Mission accomplished.