My first encounter with a persimmon was a recipe in the The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers. “Air-Dried Beef & Fuyu Persimmons with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil & Balsamic Vinegar.” The book was given to me after a trip to San Fransisco with my ex-girlfriend, the first time I had ever been, and where the only request I had during the whole trip was to go eat at Zuni. I can’t remember how I had even heard of the restaurant in the first place. A little backstory…I was in my early twenties, the sous chef of a fantastic restaurant called the Five Spice Cafe, and very into the whole lifestyle. I thought someday I would be a great chef. Most of my friends were cooks and chefs. I spent my off days reading cookbooks and cooking, testing recipes, etc. It was all I ever wanted to do.

Problem was, I lived in Burlington, VT, which is a tiny little place and back then–If I really had to reach and think about the year, I think it was 2003 or 4?–There wasn’t much going on culinarily in Burlington. Nothing at all. Although I had a mind for it all I had never worked or eaten anywhere great…Until I had dinner at Zuni. A weird experience to say the least. It was a winter night and we had sat by the window where I had a view of the street and all the vagrants out there walking by while we chowed down. I had never seen so many homeless all at once. My girlfriend at the time had booked everything for the trip and I was sort of along for the ride. A cheap hotel in the mission district…Being from Burlington, we walked everywhere, and I as we strolled around in that neighborhood, I remember thinking we were in some sort of zombie flick like Night of the Living Dead.

The dinner at Zuni hit me like a lightening bolt between the eyes. The chicken of course, but also everything about the place. The warmth of the service, the way we were treated. My boss had somehow found out we were going there and called ahead and we were treated like royalty. This punk ass kid who didn’t know shit from shinola was like a king for a night just because I worked in a shitty kitchen in the middle of nowhere. The people there actually seemed to care and ask many questions about The Five Spice which had been sort of infamous for its time. Some of them had actually heard of it.

A month later, back in Burlington, my current girlfriend gave me The Zuni Cafe Cookbook for my birthday and I went through it, trying to cook as many dishes from it as I could. When I saw the persimmon and air dried beef recipe I was totally confused. This was the time before smart phones, so I couldn’t just google persimmons to find out what they were. There was some information in the recipe itself but at the time even that made little sense to me, but low and behold, one day while at the local hippie market co-op in downtown Burlington, I happened upon some hachiya persimmons for sale and followed up with buying some bresaola from the deli.

If you know anything about persimmons, you can probably foresee what happened next. I sliced up the fruit and laid the beef next to it and did the whole drizzle with the oil and vinegar and presented it all and the moment we put it in our mouths were treated to maybe the worst dryness in the form of tannins I have ever experienced to this day. Yeah, the lesson here is don’t eat hachiya persimmons when they’re not ripe.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, there’s two types of persimmons out there. The kind you eat while somewhat crunchy (fuyu) and the type you eat while they’re disgustingly soft (hachiya). They were first cultivated in China and arrived over here in the 19th century. In my first few bar manager years I experimented with putting them in cocktails to little success. They were just too weird for me. It wasn’t until Britt from The Dutchess [sic] came down to study bartending with me before their opening, coincidentally during persimmon season in late 2021, that I began to understand and actually love them. Thanks Britt.

Here is her first cocktail ever:

Rookie of the Year

1.5 oz. Oaxaca Rum

.75 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz. Fuyu Persimmon Syrup (pretty sure this had raisin and lemon verbena as well)

.25 oz. Fresh Ginger Juice

.25 oz. Ancho Infused Rum

2 Dashes Sage Bitters