Tripping the Light Balsamic

Interestingly, the berries' effect seemed to vary completely from person to person. Some people reported no change in their tastebuds at all. Some people reported only a few items tasting differently. And some people experienced effects that lasted throughout the night, altering the taste of everything they put into their mouths.

Houstonist had a middle of the road experience with our berries. Some of the foods tasted differently, while others tasted the same as they always do. But the effects of our berries lasted well into the night, affecting the way that foods tasted several hours later. So what did we experience?

Our berries -- like everyone elses' -- had a surprisingly large pit inside of it, leaving little flesh and precious little juice to savor. Following instructions carefully, we let the juices and flesh linger on our tongues as long as possible before swallowing, to maximize the tripping potential. The berry itself tasted very similar to a cranberry, pleasingly tart. The effects took place immediately.

Eating whole limes and lemons was like drinking a pitcher of limeade or lemonade into which someone had stirred an entire sack of white sugar. While it was fascinating at first, we soon realized that it was overly sweet and spent the rest of the evening trying to get that sticky sweet taste off our tongues. Cantaloupe, strawberries and grapes all tasted exactly the same as normal ones would. Raspberries, however, were strikingly sweet but without the cloying, offensive sweetness the limes and lemons produced.

Salt and vinegar potato chips tasted exactly like they'd been drenched in sweet barbecue sauce. Balsamic vinegar tasted like caramelized sugar, dizzyingly good, and only the tangy burn in our nostrils prevented us from drinking another cupful of it (seriously, it can't be good for you to drink vinegar straight up like that). Tabasco sauce simply tasted of air, but our lips and tongue burned with the same Tabasco fire, sans any flavor. Another mysteriously ephemeral substance was the tequila, which tasted like water. That unmistakable gasoline sensation still filled our nostrils, however, leading to an altogether unpleasant dichotomy which we weren't eager to repeat.

Brussels sprouts, which are a favorite of ours anyway, tasted nothing like Brussels sprouts at all. They retained their same texture, obviously, which made for an utterly bizarre confluence of typical juicy crispness without the expected cabbagey flavor. Instead, they tasted of fresh air, green fields, springtime, almost like a crisp head of butter lettuce. We greedily gobbled as many as we could before moving on to the next items.

At the end of the table were more beverages: unsweetened cranberry juice and two dark, nutty beers. The juice tasted of Kool-Aid and cherry popsicles, but not overtly so. It was a pleasant sort of taste that reminded us of childhood and a striking reminder of the food community's original plan for Miracle fruit in this country: as an artificial sweetener for people suffering from diabetes. Unfortunately, the FDA denied approval to the powdered form of the fruit under enormous pressure from the powerful corn and sugar lobbies at the time, a sad statement on the perverse amount of power held by lobbyists and special interest groups.

Lastly came the beers. Both the Guinness and the Young's Double Chocolate Stout tasted of slightly watered-down Nestle Quik. One would expect certain chocolate undertones in the Young's, but the sheer, unadulterated chocolate taste from both was still surprising. A bit thicker, and they would have tasted exactly like chocolate milk.

While some people weren't able to experience the full effects of the Miracle fruit (the tablet form is supposed to be much more powerful, although harder to get), the evening was still a fascinating experiment to behold. Tasting the foods was interesting, but even more interesting still was to watch a mob of a hundred people slow down and experience foods in a brand-new way.

People were examining their food with new eyes, new senses, as if everything was foreign and vernal. Their faces lit up, they ate their food slowly and deliberately, lingering upon every nuance of taste, smell, texture. They licked their lips, ran their tongues across their teeth and the roofs of their mouths and smiled, laughed, like children trying a piece of mango for the first time. They studied their food, studied each other, meaningfully comparing experiences. The examinations were intense and marvelous.

It was simply intoxicating.