Zanzibar's fruit calendar barely has an empty month. Rambutan and jackfruit come and go with the rains, mangoes flood the roadside stalls from November, and coconuts and bananas are there every week of the year. This is what actually grows on the island — Swahili names included — and where you'll meet each one at Matlai: on the breakfast tray, in a Zatiny juice, or in the jam the kitchen makes when there's more of something ripe than the fruit bowl can hold.
Shoki Shoki (Rambutan)
Outside Zanzibar this is usually called rambutan, from the Malay word for hair — a nod to the soft red spines covering the shell. Locally it's Shoki Shoki, or Njugu Mawe in Swahili. Crack the shell and the flesh inside is white, sweet and juicy around a single hard seed; kitchens here use it in desserts and ice cream more than eating it plain. It's closely related to lychee — both are in the Sapindaceae family — and arrived from Malaysia and Indonesia generations ago. The season runs twice a year, June to August and again December to January; outside those windows it simply isn't on the tree.
Mango
Mango — embe in Swahili — is a stone fruit in the same plant family as cashew, and it isn't native to Zanzibar; it came from South Asia, where it's still called the "common mango." On the island it turns up from November into the new year: in fruit salad, pressed into juice, blended into ice cream, or cut green into a sharp chutney. The skin of an unripe or cooked mango can irritate sensitive skin — it shares the same irritant family as poison ivy — so the kitchen peels it well before it reaches a plate. The road that crosses the island from west to east runs past old mango trees for long stretches, planted generations ago and still fruiting.
Papaya
Papai, in Swahili, grows easily in Zanzibar's climate and turns up in both sweet and savory dishes — a legacy of the island's Indian, Arab and Persian food influences. Ripe papaya goes into fruit salad, juice and smoothies, or is eaten on its own; unripe green papaya is treated as a vegetable, shredded into chutneys and salsas rather than eaten as fruit. The black seeds, which carry the enzyme papain, sometimes find their way into spice blends or home remedies. The trees themselves, with leaves the size of umbrellas, are common enough in gardens around the island that most guests walk past several without noticing.
Stafeli (Soursop)
Soursop — stafeli locally — is the fruit in the spiky green shell that can reach 40 cm long and weigh up to 4 kg. It originated in the Caribbean and South America and travels badly, which is why it rarely leaves the regions where it's grown; the pale flesh is sour and usually ends up in juice, purée or a sweet rather than eaten straight. One caution: the seeds contain a neurotoxin, annonacin, and researchers have studied a possible link between it and a neurological disease found on Guadeloupe. The science isn't settled, but the flesh is what you want anyway — spit out the seeds.
Coconut
The word coconut comes from 16th-century Portuguese and Spanish sailors, who saw a face in the three marks on the shell — coco meant "head." Young coconuts, dafu in Swahili, are cut for their water; the mature nut, nazi, has firmer flesh used in cooking, and its pressed milk turns up throughout Zanzibari cuisine. The dried flesh, copra, is pressed for oil — the same coconut oil the spa uses in its signature massage. Traditional roofs on the island are still thatched with dried coconut leaves, known as makuti. At Matlai, the gardeners climb the palms bare-handed to bring the coconuts down — no harness, no ladder, just practice; a palm doesn't bear fruit until it's six to ten years old, and won't hit its stride, up to 75 nuts a year, until fifteen or twenty.
Jackfruit
Jackfruit is the largest tree-borne fruit anywhere — up to 15 kg each, growing straight off the trunk rather than the branches, in pods reaching a meter long. It belongs to the mulberry family, originally from South and Southeast Asia, and its name traces back through Malayalam to the Sanskrit word for wheel.
Locally it's fenesi, and it's one of the most popular fruits on the island. Ripe, it has a sweetness close to pineapple and a smell strong enough to announce itself before you see it — that smell is how you know it's ready. Unripe, it's cooked into curries as a meat substitute, its texture holding together the way jackfruit is known for in vegetarian cooking elsewhere.
Durian
Durian has a reputation before you even open one — spikes on the outside, a strong smell, and a rich, custard-like flesh inside once you're past the shell. It's called the king of fruits across Southeast Asia, and Zanzibar has its own trees, planted long ago and fruiting on their own schedule. If you're here in season, it's worth trying at least once with an open mind — the smell puts off more people than the taste does. It's dense in fibre, potassium and vitamin C, and the sulfur compounds behind the smell are also part of what gives it its flavour.
Starfruit
Cut a starfruit crosswise and every slice comes out star-shaped — the whole reason for the name, and in Swahili it's matunda ya nyota, "star fruit," for the same reason. It grows on a short, slow tree originally from Java, Sulawesi and the Moluccas, and it's rich in vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium and iron. The taste sits between sweet and sharply sour, and it's used more often as a garnish or juiced into a drink than eaten as a standalone snack. In traditional Chinese medicine the crushed fruit and its juice are used for wounds, fever and thirst — folk use rather than a medical claim.
Tangerine
Tangerines take their name from Tangier, the Moroccan port they were shipped through into Europe; the fruit itself is originally from China. In Zanzibar they're an easy, portable snack — thin, loose skin that peels in seconds, and a sweetness that needs no dressing up. They're in season alongside the other citrus and grown across the island rather than in one particular district, and like most citrus here they're low in calories and a reliable source of vitamin C.
Passion Fruit
The Swahili name, matunda ya mateso, translates to "fruit of suffering" — a reference to the passionflower's structure, which 16th-century Spanish missionaries in South America read as a symbol of Christ's crucifixion. Passiflora edulis is a climbing vine, and in Zanzibar it's common on garden walls and fences, growing up to 10 metres. Cut one open and it's mostly seeds, each wrapped in a jelly-like, tart pulp. The yellow variety is the one grown here — more acidic than the purple type found at higher altitudes elsewhere — and it goes into juice, desserts, and the passion fruit jam the kitchen makes when there's a glut.
Banana
Zanzibar grows two everyday kinds of banana under the same Swahili word, ndizi: small, sweet ones eaten as a snack straight off the bunch, and larger cooking bananas — plantains — that go into stews and curries rather than being eaten raw. Both do well in the island's rainfall and sun, and you'll find ndizi sold everywhere from Stone Town's markets to roadside stands outside every village.
Pineapple
Pineapple came from South America — the story goes that Christopher Columbus was given one as a gift on his second voyage, in 1493 — and has been grown across the tropics since the 1500s. In Swahili it's nanasi, from the same Guaraní root as "pineapple" itself, which simply meant "fruit." Zanzibar's climate suits it well: look for freshly cut pineapple rings at roadside stands and markets across the island. It's rich in vitamin C and used in juice, fruit salad and curries alike.
Watermelon
Watermelon's wild ancestor is African, though exactly where is still debated among botanists — the old assumption was southern Africa, but more recent research points further north, to Sudan. Either way, people have grown it for thousands of years; watermelon seeds and paintings turn up in ancient Egyptian tombs. The vines sprawl along the ground on tendrils that can reach 10 metres, and the flesh ranges from red to yellow to orange under a rind that's often striped or mottled. In Swahili it's tikiti maji, literally "water melon," and here it's mostly eaten raw, sliced at breakfast or blended into juice.
All of it ends up in the kitchen one way or another — cut for the floating breakfast tray, pressed into a juice at Zatiny, or turned into jam when a tree gives more than the fruit bowl can use fresh. Ask your butler what's actually in season during your stay — it changes month to month, and the answer is usually more interesting than whatever's already on the menu.
Wondering what will be in season when you visit? Check availability, or ask us before you fly.