New in New York: Allow Yourself a Taste of Forbidden Fruit

By Mitch Broder

Forbidden Fruit was founded on two sound principles: Fruit belongs in chocolate, and chocolate belongs on fruit.

Except maybe in the cases of melons and grapes. But every principle gets resistance.

Forbidden Fruit is an all-chocolate-covered-fruit place, which makes it a good fit for the all-peculiar-place food court that is MacDougal Street. It’s a simple store with a simple selection that harbors the simple hope of conquering all the other food courts of the world, peculiar or not.

When you’re ready to help it succeed, prepare to “dip it!!!” or “drip it!!!” (With either choice, you get three exclamation points.) The dip-its are the individual fruits, which are coated with chocolate. The drip-its are the medleys of fruits, which are drizzled with chocolate.

The dip-its include strawberries, pineapples, bananas, and apples (in wedges). The drip-its include fruit sticks, fruit cups, berry boats, and clementines (in wedges). The chocolate comes in the customary white, milk, and dark. You can add coconut or walnuts. Or sprinkles, but just on bananas.

A manager gave me chocolate fruit. This was especially generous, since a clerk had already given me chocolate fruit. The manager gave me all dark chocolate, which is the correct kind. Everything was delicious. The bananas tasted like chocolate-covered banana ice cream.

So Forbidden Fruit has the product. Then again, so does Edible Arrangements. But Forbidden Fruit is different from that global fruit-bouquet chain. It has no Grand Confetti Fruit Cupcake or SpongeBob Bikini Bottom Bouquet. It has no fruit growing out of footballs. It’s not about arrangements. It’s about a snack.

The idea for the snack reportedly came from a fountain — specifically, the chocolate fountain at Dylan’s Candy Bar. Abbas Devji saw lots of people there waiting in line to dip things. He was uneasy with the public dipping. He envisioned fruit predipped.

He enlisted a creative director, Matthew Higginson, to create a store. Matthew led a six-month quest to develop the look and the menu. He dipped many fruits. He found that some of them didn’t agree with chocolate. Those included watermelon, cantaloupe, and grapes. They are the forbidden fruit.

Matthew wants to see Forbidden Fruits from Boston to L.A. Meanwhile, he’s planning  a Chocolate of the Month for New York City. And he’s just added a Fruit of the Season. The first one is the cherry, which, of course, has had a long and successful relationship with chocolate.

For now, though, the star fruit is the banana, which is convenient, since the banana is the symbol of Forbidden Fruit. You might not think it would work with a chocolate peel, but it does. As Matthew puts it: “You could cover a rock with chocolate and it would taste good.”

Take a dip at Forbidden Fruit, 106 MacDougal Street, between Third and Bleecker streets, in New York City.