All hail the berry

I have noticed that the composition of room-service fruit platters has shifted. It’s like climate change. It sneaks up on you.

I like fruit. I have always liked fruit. Fruit is healthy and non-fattening; it’s a terrific snack between meals; and I am told that there are internal organs that benefit from its unprocessed roughage. And if that be so then let me assure you that my internal organs are in rude health.

For the past decade I have travelled weekly for business, staying in hotels. I have room service meals and always include in my order a fruit platter. That I never deviate from this ritual will not surprise my regular readers.

Why take risks with a sugary crème brûlée of unknown provenance when I can have a wholesome platter of sliced fruit? (Plus, it’s cheaper.) I particularly like this room-service menu item because it allows each city and hotel to showcase how a fruit platter can be interpreted. A crème brûlée is constructed to a recipe. A fruit platter is unprescribed other than the fact that it must contain fruit.

But here’s the thing. I have noticed over the years that the composition of room-service fruit platters has shifted. It’s like climate change; it sneaks up on you. In the beginning fruit platters were a fecund and piquant assemblage, a symphony of berries, stone fruit and the odd artfully sliced orange.

But recently the berry content of room-service fruit platters has receded – like the drying up of an inland lake – and other fruit, lesser fruit in my opinion, has advanced. And, needless to say, the fruit that is expanding doesn’t have any of the berry family’s intrinsic deliciosity. Yes, deliciosity – it’s a word used frequently by fruit platter aficionados.

The fruit that’s on the rise is none other than the melon. Whereas once strawberries and blueberries might have been gaily scattered by a chef’s hand hither and thither upon the platter, there is now nought but a solemn stacking of tedious slabs of cantaloupe (aka rockmelon) and honeydew and of the dear sweet strawberry’s mortal enemy, the watermelon.

You do realise that the only reason watermelon makes it into the Christmas fruit salad is because it is red, cheap and a bulky substitute for the more delicious and admittedly expensive strawberry. I know I will receive angry correspondence from the Australian Melon Fanciers’ Association but I care not, for I feel it is my civic duty to call out injustice and conspiracy wherever I see it.

The great Berry-Melon Shift in room-service fruit platters in the early decades of the 21st century is emblematic of a greater trend where government departments and slick corporates – hotels in this instance –with an eye to the bottom line are forever looking for ways to cut costs.

Well, I say enough is enough. We the fruit platter nation demand that the deliciosity and integrity of the Australian fruit platter be restored. From this day forth I am calling for a quota limiting the melon content in fruit platters, and in food-court fruit salads, to no more than 10 per cent. Further, we the fruit platter people also demand that the berry component be no less than 25 per cent.

I suggest the establishment of a Fruit Platter Regulatory Board to uphold these rules. Oh, it might start with fruit but where it ends, we know not where. This conspiracy is emblematic of a broader culture of the pursuit of productivity gains by stealth, to the point that the very berry merriment of life is forever being silently traded downwards. One day, in the not too distant future, I fear that we will all wake up and ask: where have life’s berries gone?