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Ya Pear I understand and embrace apples, even the tiny ones that for somereason are supposed to be that way. I can identify brusselssprouts, though I've resolved to never again sit at a table withthem. More and more, however, I walk through the produce section of amarket and think I'm dangling from someone else's food chain. If Ilook it up, I can read that the long, narrow Opo squash also iscalled calabash, lone melon, hu lu gua, peh poh, yugao and cucuzzi.But I don't know why it came calling on us. Easy question, says the Salvaggio team. The oddities are herebecause a lot of people who knew them in Africa or Asia or SouthAmerica are here now, too, and because farmers in SouthernCalifornia and Mexico figured out how to grow them. In a broad sense, they are a way to bridge the gap betweencontinents and cultures. In a narrower sense, as in what's fordinner, they all taste good, at least to somebody. Even the seaurchin fruit, known to its many friends in Malaysia as therambutan. Rooted in cultures Before produce manager Kim Gordinier broke one open for me with herthumbnails, I would not have touched a rambutan with a 10-foot polebean. The fruit inside the spiny exterior, it turns out, has asweet-yet-acidic flavor that would remind you a bit of a mandarinorange if you weren't gazing at its translucent white pulpy selfand thinking, "In a horror movie, this would be the alien's brain."Pete Loren, Nino Salvaggio's executive chef, says rambutans remindhim of lychee nuts, if that helps any. "The thing to remember," Loren says, "is that these are the fruitsof people's childhoods." So ever since deep purple, plum-sized,Southeast Asian mangosteens with their grape-like white fruit wereapproved for sale in the United States last July, buyers have beengobbling them up at $12.99 per pound. "We didn't open the store with all this produce in it," Taylorpoints out. But when customers load up on mango leaf -- good forwrapping steamed fish or nailing to your door to ward off evilspirits, all for the same $5.99 per pound -- you keep stackingcrates of it on trucks. Loren, 55, whose impressive restaurant resume includes tours ofduty at the London Chop House and Opus One, wanders the rows ofexotics every day and feels like a kid in a Calabaza squash store.Eager for new suggestions, he'll approach people with specialtyproduce in their carts and ask, "What do you use this for?"Typically, he says, passers-by listen in. Unless someone tells you, after all -- or unless you're a corporatechef who gets paid to experiment -- you won't know that a freshwater chestnut tastes sweet, or that a juicy, egg-shaped Ya pearmakes for a nice custard. When he throws parties, he's saying, he'll fill trays with some ofthe more unusual merchandise just as conversation pieces. He'sleading a tour, past the knobby-skinned, watermelon-sized Jackfruit and the Ecuadorian Pepino melons, and when he gets to theForrele pears, he stops.