Let Them Not Eat Cake

You’ve just finished a fine meal at a fine restaurant and now it’s time to order that piece of chocolate cake or that slice of apple pie . . . right? Wrong. If you’re in the know, if you’re “with it,” if you always do what’s de rigeur , then you’ll order exotic fruit for dessert.

Ranging from blood-red Japanese oranges steeped in liqueur to white, wild strawberries to kiwanos--a yellow-orange fruit that looks like a pear with spikes coming out it--to any combination of these and other strange fruits, the exotic edibles are appearing on hungry Valleyites’ dessert plates quicker than you can say “litchi nut.”

A Sherman Oaks restaurant owner whose star dessert feature is a variety of exotic fruits arranged on a plate explained the appeal: “The exotic-fruit plate is so unusual, some people might be scared by it. But other people who have a sense of adventure want to give it a try. It makes a great conversation piece at the table. Let’s face it, people go out to eat and to have fun--to talk.”

“When I go out to eat, I want something special,” said a young Burbank executive. “I don’t want something I can have at home every day, so it’s nice to have the exotic fruits.”

An Encino teen-ager agrees. “You can only have cheesecake so often . . . you get tired of it,” she said. “But eating weird fruit makes me feel like I’m in another part of the world.”

FO