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The coolest pepper I have ever eaten is a crooked, inconspicuous looking thing called a Habanada. I first tasted it during a conference at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York. It was dark and noisy, with guests all lined up at long, swarming tables—a sort of Hogwarts dining hall vibe. After a hearty introduction from Dan Barber, a cross-section of the pepper arrived, served on a thin round of earthy-sweet flame beet, on a kind of nordic-looking cracker. The vegetables were dressed with olive oil and a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. In all honesty, I thought it was a joke.
I popped the trio in my mouth; the flavor was immediately disarming. The Habanada (also known as a Sweet Habanero, or a Honey Zepper) was bright and tangy like a habanero but with none of the lingering heat to distract you from the little pepper’s complex flavor. I chewed cautiously, expecting to feel that familiar burn. But all that followed was a mild, honeydew melon aftertaste. The best way I can describe the Habanada is to say it’s like eating chili flowers. For days after the dinner, I dreamed about marinating some of the whole peppers, tossing them raw into a ceviche or a fresh summer salad, or dragging them through my favorite dip.
The seed was first developed by Michael Mazourek during his doctoral research at Cornell University, after procuring some rare, heatless habanero mutations found in New Mexico. Mazourek named it the "Habanada." (Blue Hill is now the biggest buyer of the peppers.) The pepper is a hybrid: the result of cross-pollinating two pure vegetable lines. In this case, the rogue heatless pepper, with a traditional habanero. It took a few generations, but, in 2007, Mazourek finally ended up with a consistent breed: the aromatic, totally mild Habanada.
Up until a couple days ago, there were only two routes to get your hands on one: Find the seeds and grow them in your backyard, or go to a restaurant, like Blue Hill or Portland’s Le Pigeon, that serves them. But, this season, Ark Foods, the grower responsible for popularizing the shishito pepper, is selling their first large scale harvest of the peppers via FreshDirect.
The founder of Ark Foods, Noah Robbins, started calling it the "Honey Zepper" after planting his first trial three years ago. Though people have called it a lot of other names, “we tried to come up with with something that truly describes the taste,” he says.
Whatever you call it, the pepper is a delicate plant. Robbins says it takes up to six months to fully mature. “The longer a plant is out there in the ground, the more vulnerable it is to bad weather and bugs,” he explains. Robbins is growing the pepper year-round on his farms in Florida, North and South Carolina, and Georgia (hopefully in New Jersey next year). He’s spent the past month waiting, anxiously, for the knurly little things to turn from green to vibrant orange—a sign they’re ready for harvest.
“There’s no reason this pepper can’t be readily available,” he says. “We want to be the ones to really make that accessible to everyone.”
This school of thought informs the mission at Ark Foods, which is that, through a combination of variety, novelty, and good marketing, vegetables should and will find their rightful place at the center of the plate. After all, says Robbins, “the dirt is just a blank canvas—you can grow anything on it.”
You can buy the Honey Zepper in 6 oz clamshells on FreshDirect for $3.49.