A Passion-Fruit Devotee’s Pilgrimage West

After my trip to Brazil, I searched for fresh passion fruit obsessively in New York and rarely found it. When I did, it was often priced prohibitively high, as much as five dollars for a single piece. And then, about a year into the pandemic, I hit upon something enviable while scrolling through Instagram: a video of an influencer with a chicly appointed kitchen, unboxing a shipment of passion fruit. I learned that a company called Rincon Tropics, in California, would mail it across the country, quite affordably, if you were willing to purchase a minimum of five pounds. A few days after I placed my first order, a large U.S.P.S. box arrived, filled to the brim with fragrant purple globes, sturdy enough that they needed minimal cushioning. I piled them in a bowl to wrinkle—the more shrivelled they get, the sweeter—and worked my way through several a day.