Kaki/Caqui Fruit: A tomato fruit wonder

Which one is a tomato and which one is Kaki/Caqui fruit?
On your left is the good old tomato and on your right in the Kaki/Caqui!

Many times in the past while walking swiftly through fruits sections in super market in England. I saw tomatoes being kept in beautifully looking plastic boxes. I often wondered why they were kept in the fruits section and not in the vegetables. May be they are the best quality tomatoes specifically required for certain Italian or English delicacy. The logic of the mind was so convincing that I never stopped to look closely at the labels of these good sized and shaped tomatoes.


Years later, I saw the similar looking tomatoes in Brazil. Where I along with family were staying on a long holiday. This time around I had time in my hands and was much relaxed compared to my stay in England. Perhaps it was my age or I was now a really relaxed person. A person who is more observant of his or her surroundings, less driven by the pace of the mind and more by the freshness of life as such. When every moment of life is new, then why run like a mule towards a pre-determined and imagined goal? Just because every body is running, doesn’t mean that I should run.


Any way, I saw my wife picking some of these tomatoes one evening in a fruit and vegetable shop. Getting close to her, I asked frankly. “Honey, do you need more of these tomatoes, we have a plate full of them back at home?” She smilingly looked at me ,as if to suggest that I was teasing her , and said “Honey these are not tomatoes, these are fruits”. Her words struck like lightening to me. I said “What?”. She said “ Yes, they are very sweat and healthy fruit”. What are they called, I asked. Kaki in English, Caqui in Portuguese and also as Oriental Persimmon. Kaki fruit, sweat and healthy! I was murmuring.



Over the next few hours, I was lost in deep thought. A fruit which just looks like the tomatoes. But is not a tomato. My wife had already started to taste one the Kaki fruit, and lovely offered me to taste. In the starting I was a bit reluctant, to even taste the tomato fruit. “If it looks like a tomato, it must taste and smell as well as a tomato”, I thought. However, I soon noticed that our 2 year son, who I was sure had never tasted Kaki/ Caqui fruit earlier in his life. Seemed to enjoy the flavor. This gave me some courage, and slowly I ventured to taste.


Wow! What is this ? It was as if I had tasted some thing from an another planet. Normally, my taste buds allow me to quickly relate the taste of new food with some thing I had tasted in the past. But having Kaki/Caqui was an eye opener. It was perhaps the first time that I had eaten half dozen pieces of a fruit and not figured out its family and similarities. It was as if , my senses had been numbed by the fruit, or my mind did not have any information from the past which could help make mind maps in the current. For the next couple of weeks, my hands would irresistably reach towards the Kaki/ Caqui fruit.



The Persimmon belong to the same family as the classic Kaki but undergoes different ripening techniques. KAKI, is a fruit which originated in china. It was originally introduced in EUROPE, mainly as an ornamental planet, but it was soon , became popular. Currently, Kaki/Caqui fruit is grown in many different parts of the world. In Asia its grown widely in China, Korea and Japan. In Americas Brazil and Mexico are major producers, while Italy in Europe. Kaki is high in proteins ,vitamin A and high fiber make it a good fruit to be part of children’s diet.


Kaki/Caqui plants in South Brazil


Kaki/Caqui fruit in Brazil are mainly of two varieties. One type is more redish very similar to the color of the tomato, while the other type of Kaki/ Caqui fruit is more yellowish in color. The second kind of Kaki/Caqui fruit has shades of brown color inside, which the local people call as the chocolate. Both of these varieties are similar in size and shape, but the reddish ones tend to be more softer and sweater from inside.


Its been all most a month, since I had the first tasted the Kaki /Caqui fruit. Need less to say to the reader, that in such a short time, I have become highly appreciative of this wonderful fruit to the point that am writing an article on it, for the benefit of other food lovers on this magical place called the mother earth.



In a recent trip to the farm land near my in-laws house, we happened to bump into a nursery. And guess which plant I wanted to see? Am planning to take Kaki/Caqui seeds back home to India and if possible import them for treating the local market. However, no matter how long my affair with the Kaki/Caqui fruit continues, it will always be the remembered as a " tomato fruit ". :)