Penang/Kuala Lumpur: The durian, aka the “king of fruits”, is not for everyone. Gordon Chong says when his mates sliced up samples at a pop-up shop in Melbourne’s The Glen shopping centre last year, a concerned citizen, sniffing something awry, phoned Triple 0 to report a gas leak.
The Glen didn’t confirm specifics*, but it would not be especially unusual. The inimitable fruit’s record of waft “emergencies” in Australia includes evacuations of universities, libraries and hospitals.
In 2003, a Virgin Blue flight from Brisbane to Adelaide was delayed four hours as cargo handlers investigated the source of what chief executive Brett Godfrey said was “just the most pungent, disgusting smell”.
“This wasn’t a safety issue, this was a gross issue,” he said after the offender – durian stowed in a passenger’s luggage – was found and cleared. “No one wants to fly in an aeroplane that smells like that.”
Evidently, Godfrey is not a fan. Western palettes and noses are not accustomed to such joys.
“An Aussie walks past and will be like, ‘gas leak’,” says Chong, a Malaysian who moved to Australia 25 years ago. “An Asian walks past and says, ‘Durian! I’m buying it’.”
Chong says he had to fly home to get his pungent, sweet, custardy fix. Then, a few years ago, frozen Malaysian durian pulp started appearing in Asian groceries. It was “pretty nice” but not the real deal.
Certain Coles and Woolworths stores now occasionally stock the whole fruit. The problem is, they also arrive frozen. More offensive to Malay sensibilities is that they are an imported variety from Thailand, and “actually horrible”.
Chong and friend Jerry Fong agreed something must be done, so they set up Durian Lah, a side gig that puts them at the experimental edge of Australia’s minuscule durian game.
“We don’t want to do frozen because you can buy it from anywhere,” Chong says. “We want the fresh ones. That’s what people are craving.”
The business is so new it hasn’t even received its first shipment (durian season is just starting in Malaysia), but the idea is to fly in fresh durian pulp on overnight flights from Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne.
Durians have an exceedingly short – and sensitive – shelf life, so customers must then make haste to Durian Lah warehouses in Vermont and Preston to collect their orders.
“We’re just waiting for the arrival date and the price, and off we go,” Chong says.
The first run of 400g packs might retail for $50 to $70 each, dropping in price later in the year as more fruit comes online in Malaysia. People are willing to pay, he says, because “it’s just that childhood taste that you can’t get”. “People who know durian, they know.”
Chong’s passion is a glimpse of durian devotion embedded through swathes of South-East Asia. In Malaysia, the fruiting season activates family gatherings and spawns ubiquitous street sellers. In Singapore, members of parliament – yes, politicians – lead constituents on sold-out tours over the border to feast on all-you-can-eat durian buffets.
Durian etiquette in Asia holds that it must be consumed out of nose-shot of the public. Signs on buses, trains and hotel elevators ram home the point.
For full disclosure, I love durian. It is nutty, buttery, sweet and filling. My wife, however, is more of the Brett Godfrey mind.
She bought an orange ice-cream once, believing it was mango-flavoured, and realised quick smart she should have had a closer look. The durian ice cream went into an outside bin, and the taste from just one lick, she insisted on reminding me, lingered into the evening.
There remains a total durian ban in our household.
So, my trip to the Durian Tree House in Penang recently was a joy. It is run by husband and wife team Simon Chua and Yvonne Tan on about 30 acres of mountainous terrain overlooking the Strait of Malacca.
Some of the towering trees on their property are more than 60 years old: the older the tree, the better the fruit.
Part of the business is accommodation. They also open up tables for the day-trippers – like a durian cellar door.
To serve, Chua first bashes the hard outer casing with the flat side of his machete to trigger the “fermentation” he says makes for creamier, richer flesh.
The idea is to gorge with friends, starting from the less prestigious varieties and working your way up to the black thorn and musang king (known in China as the “Hermès” of durian), savouring the changing flavours and textures from one fruit to the next.
“Human, you take care of – baby, take care, take care, and they grow up with the good qualities, very smart. The tree has a life too,” Chua says.
“You need to use a lot of fertiliser, you need to water, you need to care. Sometimes you need to also sing a song.”
Come again? A customer might be waiting for a specific number of durians and singing, Chua explains, smooths the farmer-tree collaboration.
‘Chinese people visit Malaysia and they try durian and love it. And when Chinese people love something, it just, you know, goes viral.’
Gordon Chong
He offers one of his ditties, translating from the Chinese for my benefit: “Black thorn, black thorn, give me a few. I need you to drop from tree.”
Not so long ago, durian farming in Malaysia was just a hobby, or grown professionally, but for local consumption only.
These days, the industry, centred in Thailand (the biggest exporter), Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, has ballooned into a multibillion-dollar behemoth, turning battling farmers into fruit moguls.
‘The durian index’
Like many profound transformations, it is because of China.
From a few hundred million dollars worth of durian product a decade ago, China, now in the midst of a durian craze, last year imported a staggering US$7.5 billion ($10.4 billion). This is more than a third of the country’s total intake of foreign fruit in terms of dollar value.
Chong, in Melbourne, puts it this way: “Because of tourism, Chinese people visit Malaysia and they try durian and love it. And when Chinese people love something, it just, you know, goes viral.”
Some have proposed a “durian index”, arguing that patterns of Chinese consumption may provide reliable early indicators about the state of the country’s broader economy.
Thai and Vietnamese farmers have the inside running with the Chinese masses because of their geographical proximity – cheaper freight means cheaper, fresher durians.
But Malaysians tend to turn up their noses at the Thai varieties. Chong, being diplomatic, describes the subdued taste of the Thai fruit as like a pinot noir to Malaysian musang king’s full-bodied shiraz.
Malaysian varieties, symbols of wealth and discernment in China, have a diplomatic function, too. In 2024, Malaysia’s king Ibrahim gave Chinese President Xi Jinping two boxes of the good stuff during a state visit. Malaysia’s prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and Chinese Premier Li Qiang also scoffed musang king and black thorn earlier the same year.
Purists will crack a durian and pull the sweet, soft flesh straight from the spiky casing with their bare fingers. But for milder experiences, try durian ice cream, cakes or confectionery.
Dr Tan Sue Yee, chief executive of Top Fruits, one of Malaysia’s biggest exporters, says you can turn durian into about 90 products, even spaghetti.
“For the past four or five years, the whole market has been moving – growth is 20-30 per cent each year,” he says. “That’s until last season – it became a durian tsunami.”
He is referring to the perfect growing conditions that created a glut, forcing down prices. Oversupply has been exacerbated by new farms: trees planted a decade ago, at the beginning of Chinese interest, are now bearing their first batches of good fruit.
Tan, though, is not worried. Lower prices mean lower expectations, which can be a good thing, he says. In any case, he projects the value of the entire South-East Asian durian industry to more than double over the next six years to about US$45 billion. There is room for everyone.
“The next target is India,” he says. “Ohhh, the Indian market will be very good.”
An assistant brings in the company’s top seller: a pizza covered in cheese and golf ball-sized globs of durian. I wouldn’t reach for it again. The Chinese, however, buy as many as 300,000 of them a month.
“We do a stinking business,” Tan quips.
He jokes that I, as a durian man, could be his pizza agent in Australia. I explain that we are not ready. Australians need to settle the pineapple debate before introducing, of all things, the stinkiest fruit in the world.
*A spokesperson for The Glen shopping centre says: “There have been occasions when the centre management team received calls from customers concerned about a possible gas leak due to a noticeable smell.”
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