That’s fine- more escarole and frisee for me 
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I love steamed okra. Especially the miniature variety.
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You are welcome to my share. Why waste it on someone who won’t appreciate it?
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You took me back to my childhood. I was born in a rural village in Galle, a district in southern Sri Lanka. My grandfather used to grow okra on the foot paths(ridges) in his paddy field. Some days I walk on them with my dad, and he picks very tender okra and eats them with me. I loved them. My dad is no more but that’s one memory I will exchange my life to go back and live one second.
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Oh, that’s very sweet. What a great memory to have with your Dad!
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Circling back because @LindaWhit linked an article with this on WFD:
“There are three types of sweet corn sold today, each differentiated by sweetness: normal-sugar, sugar-enhanced, and super-sweet (this one with nearly three times the amount of sugar as the normal variety). So, if you’ve noticed that your corn on the cob tastes blissfully sweet, that’s probably because it is, no matter what color kernels you’re eating.”
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Between this remark and the presence of the famous ECL, much more SF content in this thread than anticipated. 
That’s mostly the case In These Islands too. But one Irish supermarket, Dunnes, actually has this as a shelving category. And even – where packaged – as a label, right there on the product. “Exotic Fruit.” It’s a bit odd, as very much a non-category category. Like World Music. Faintly Othering, indeed. Food From Foreign!
I suppose they do it because they have a somewhat more extensive range of these than other domestic supermarkets. (The main multiples are Tesco, the UK supermarket, the two German discounters, which make a point of being rather more limited-range than the others, and SuperValu, which as well as being badly short of vowel, I struggle to think of a ‘real’ supermarket at all, being a franchise-model chain whose stores read like they’re overgrown corner shops from another decade or conveniences stores.) So they’re making a point of marketing it. And also to brace you for the sticker shock when you then realize how few kumquats or dragonfruit you’re about to get for your fiver.
“exotic” cannot be a standard category ever, because it changes from place to place. That’s what made me ask this question too, to know what’s exotic for different people. If exotic were a standard category, when you come to Sri Lanka you’ll find that the exotic fruits are actually local fruit for you. 
Another idea of exotic I found in books is “luxury.” E.g. if a house has exotic ornaments it shows wealth and luxury. In a way it’s same about vegetables and fruits too. At least in my country.
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Sure, it’s nonsense as a “standard category” – as I think I said in terms! I just thought it was a (potentially! – or not, YMMV) interesting datapoint that is was nonsense made manifest in shelving and packaging in that instance. So while it varies from place to place (every Dunnes Store in Ireland, vs… everywhere else), it necessarily can’t vary from person to person, at least if they were so rash as to take Dunnes’ word on the matter.
Apparently on their website they go with the slightly more objectively reasonable “tropical and exotic”, the packaging of the latter remains as described. In fact in this case, that it’s “exotic” is apparently all they’ll tell you, rather than the name of the fruit in question! 
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haha yes I had a look. it’s just “exotic fruit” lol. I wonder what they are. kind of pears?
they say it’s flavoursome.
They have pineapple and watermelon which i think are exotic for them. Not sure of others.
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I’m glad you enjoyed, didn’t want to link as it’s not like I’m on commission, or anything. 
No, I think pineapple and watermelon are merely “tropical”, and haven’t been for quite a while. Even mangos, kiwis, and pomegranates aren’t nominatively ‘exotic’ any more! I’m going to have to go check what they’re actually selling right now with an ‘exotic’ label, now you’ve reminded me! (Also, I need a generic loaf of own-brand wholewheat bread – if they even have any left. How exotic is that!
The “mystery exotic fruit” is indeed hilarious! I’m curious if that’s not a site-manifesting error, or if it’s really some sort of “exotic fruit du jour” item. Stay tuned while I investigate!
First, I assume everyone is quite literally on the edge of their seat awaiting the result of my breadquest. Success! Whole seconds before chucking-out time.
So I didn’t linger too long over the “exotics”, but I do have a few scattered datapoints. First, the section still exists! And it’s several shelves, populated by various things I just said weren’t “exotic” at all. Oh well! Even coconuts, a fruit so lamestream it appears inside a Mars confection and on the outside of home-made Scottish sweets in the '70s, can apparently be “exotic” if in “drinking” form, it seems. Second, the packaging seems to have disappeared entirely. Kumquats don’t appear in the “exotic” punnets shown on that website and that I remember from previously, and no sign of the Repo Man-style Generic Exotic Fruit (that’ll be two quid, please) item.
Most exotic thing on display were rambutans, which I confess I’d never heard of, which is an excellent indication of idiosyncratic exoticness. Apparently they’re a sort of anti-personal lychee, though I’m certain all you food sophisticates already knew that!
Persimmon, it seems. There’s another slightly clearer image on the item description.
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I searched for Persimmon when I saw this, and found that I’ve never eaten it. I must buy it if I ever see it in a supermarket but I’m sure I’ve not seen it anywhere. Google says it’s grown in China and Korea.
Rambutan is one of my favourite fruits. I absolutely love it. Last month was the season of Rambutan, Mangosteen, and Durian. We have a small rambutan tree but its fruits are eaten by monkeys and giant squirrels. Same about mangosteen.
I have collected screenshots of funny website ads but I can’t find the folder. Will post a few when I find it.
A few months ago I went to a Spar supermarket here, and there was a bathroom deo of two colours of same identical product. It had a discount on it, so I took it to the counter. The cashier added the regular price. I told her that the display said there’s a discount. She said it’s for the other colour. I said it didn’t mention the colour. You know what she said? She said it’s in the barcode! I got really ticked off. I asked her how many customers come shopping with a barcode reader and their data base. I called the manager, took him there, and asked him how I can read the barcode. He gave me the discount.
Supermarkets sometimes make the stupidest mistakes, and think that customers would figure it out themselves. 
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Giant squirrels! O.O Not a phrase I thought I’d be reading here today.
Persimmon I’ve seen in that supermarket before, not sure about any of the others locally (Tesco maybe, the li’l uns I’m fairly sure not). If I were shopping for it I’d try going to the various much (much, much, much!) smaller “Asian food market” shops – a vaguely defined category to be sure, but there’s a number of them in essentially the same location here, so that’d be my aimlessly speculative starting point. In the UK, I know that similar stores exist in cities of a reasonable size or with any reasonable-sized immigrant community. Though often those trend more South Asian, so might not be doing those.
Those others I’d at least heard of, and could stand a fighting chance of spelling without google’s help.
Yeah, shelving can be misleading that way. And of course, sometimes even if they shelve and label everything right… customers can move one or the other around and flummox the next person!
The aforementioned Tesco, for example, sells two different “own brand but not” pepperoni pizzas. They have almost identical names, and almost identical packaging. And of course, they’re on adjacent shelves. But one is something like double-to-triple the price of the other! Which is confusing enough to start with – if not suspiciously close to deliberately misleading. But imagine the mayhem that results if someone picks up the more expensive one, and carelessly puts it down on the wrong shelf!
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“suspiciously close to deliberately misleading”
This is like Rambutan sellers in Sri Lanka. They make a heap of the most beautiful fruits and put up a board for the cheapest price. Just behind the price board are the old, close to rotting fruits. When you give the seller the money he picks from the old fruits. When you ask him he says that the board is for that one, and the good one is more expensive. That’s an age old scam but still people get caught. Their target is those who come to the city from the villages, having no idea of scams.
I’ve got a few interesting stories about how I handled scammers, I’ll write them tomorrow. It’s 2.am here in Sri Lanka.
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Different case, I’d argue. That’s the full-service greengrocer con trick, as opposed to ambient pricing and shelving confusion! And we have that one in these islands too, no question…
I’m tempting to get into the same Tesco having packets of bourbon biscuits where the one that was twice the size was six times the price… but I’ll try not to derail your thread more than you, while you rest. Sleep well!
Persimmons here are something my grandparents ate.
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And California, US. . At least Northern. I don’t grow them, but I seem to recall the squat orange not astringent ones growing even in unmaintained yards. One reference says some like mild winters and don’t like high summer heat and my area has mild winters but intense heat.
“California Rare Fruit Growers, Inc.”
Around here I’ve known people who give them away like they give away zucchini elsewhere, and I seem to recall trying that thing where you dry them, caressing them every day.
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