A few days ago, I did something stupid: While on a quick run to grab something at the grocery store, I purposely overdrew a rarely used checking account. I didn't plan to. I had enough cash on me to get what was on my list, and I knew that Wachovia would slap me with fees for using this debit card, but the immediate need was more important. I had found one of the things on my noshing bucket list: a mangosteen.

I will explain: In 2004, I was living in a studio apartment that I had decorated with pictures from an old tropical-fruit calendar my neighbors threw out. There were mangoes, lychees, star fruits, and the mysterious mangosteen: a fruit with a thick, purple-maroon rind that opened to reveal impeccable, snowy-white sections of fruit inside. I didn't think much of the mangosteen until a couple of friends stopped by one night. One of them, who grew up in India, stared at my wall. “Oh my goodness, mangosteen!” he said with a weird mixture of excitement and intensity. “Have you ever tried one?” I shook my head. “If you ever get an opportunity to, you HAVE to.” He went on this way for a bit, talking about the fruit with the same sort of fervor and adoration that new parents have when discussing their baby's tiny hands and toes. His message was clear: This wasn't a just fruit; it was a fruit experience.

My efforts to find a mangosteen in 2004 were quickly thwarted; at that time, the fruit was unavailable in the continental United States. Somewhat finicky to grow, it only does well in tropical climates like Thailand, and worries about insects kept the Agriculture Department from allowing the 'steens to be imported. Thus multiple New York Times articles from the early 2000s refer to mangosteens as a “forbidden fruit.” In one of those articles R.W. Apple Jr. wrote, “No other fruit, for me, is so thrillingly, intoxicatingly luscious, so evocative of the exotic East, with so precise a balance of acid and sugar, as a ripe mangosteen.” If Eve's forbidden apple came from the tree of knowledge, it seemed the forbidden mangosteen came from the tree of ultimate taste — eating it, I would know all things delicious.

Over the next few years, the mangosteen flitted in and out of my consciousness. Much like the heroine of a romantic comedy, I tried to appease myself with pale shadows of what my heart really wanted. I ate juicy plums and plump strawberries that, while wonderful, were all too familiar. I flirted with canned mangosteen, an experience that provided a ghost of the fruit, syrup-drenched and spiritless. And then, then there was the juice.

In 2002, mangosteen fell into the same trap as other obscure fruits; being sold as a quack-tonic cure-all. In this trap, respectable and delicious fresh fruits become known primarily in their juice form, which can deliver “powerful antioxidants.” In some cases, this juice marketing works out well. I'm on board with pomegranate juice, for example, the stuff tastes good and can be a heck of a lot more convenient for getting the pomegranate taste into certain recipes.

But juicing did little good for the mangosteen's reputation. The primary vendor of mangosteen juice in the U.S., XanGo, made some notoriously wild health claims, so much so that in 2006, the FDA sent the company a warning letter about its marketing. In it the FDA cited several bits of XanGo's language it was concerned about, including claims that the mangosteen juice was “anti-viral,” “Anti-Parkinson, Anti-Alzheimer and other forms of dementia,” and “anti-tumor.” No word as to whether it was anti-hyperbole.

I suspect that shady health claims weren't the only damage XanGo did to the mangosteen here in America. Because XanGo blends the mangosteen rind with the interior fruit, the juice's taste is far from the taste that made R.W. Apple flip his lid and is not likely to turn any juice drinkers into fresh-fruit seekers. Rather, the juice tastes exactly like you would expect an antioxidant health juice to taste: interesting and fruity, but also tart and a little tough. When I tried it, all I could say was that it was so utterly ... fine. Not good. Not bad. Not filled with fireworks of flavor and pizazz. Although I should mention that I don't have dementia yet. Coincidence?

Anyway, in 2007, the FDA finally approved the fresh fruit for sale in the US as long as it had been irradiated to kill any potential buggy hitch hikers. I discovered this exiting news in a City Paper blurb that also noted DiBruno Brothers would be selling a limited number of the fruits at the hilariously expensive price of $45 a pound. I know, I know, $45 a pound is no white truffle price, but it's still enough money that if someone cut off my arm and tried to sell it back to me at $45 a pound, I'd hesitate before writing that check. Nonetheless, I went to DiBruno's to scope out the fruit (hey, I have priorities; mangosteen > arm). They were sold out.

After that, I mostly forgot about the mangosteen. It might seem like I gave up easily, but the foods that really haunt me are the ones I've tasted before – it's hard to be obsessed with a food I haven't tried. And as far as I knew at that point, fresh mangosteen really did have all of the boring taste of the mangosteen juice. It wasn't difficult to resign myself to being a mangosteen widow.

And so the fruit had been out completely of my head for almost three years when I found a bag of it sitting in the Spring Garden Market last week, $8.99 for 10 fruits. I felt a deep pit of excitement grow inside me. Mangosteens! They weren't, I imagine, the most gorgeous-looking specimens; the tops had started to dry out, and the royal purple flesh was tinged in places with flecks of brown. But after I raced home, tore open the plastic mesh bag, and carefully cut through the outer flesh, I was rewarded with sections of glistening, cloud-white fruit on the inside. I took a bite, and it was like no fruit I had ever tasted. With a consistency a little like a lychee, juicy but not drippingly so, the mangosteen tastes like ... itself. I know that's not helpful, but it's so unlike any other fruit I've had. It tastes like it would be gorgeous in cocktails, salads and ice creams, but it begs to just be eaten on its own. So I did that. Then I ate another.

Because at the end of a romantic comedy, the heroine always gets what she wants.

Meg Favreau is a writer and comedian living in Philadelphia. Check out her website, www.megfavreau.com.

Article photograph by Meg Favreau, via Flickr (Creative Commons), “Menu” photograph from Image Source/Getty Images; "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.