CHINA — A video of a stir-fry durian dish that went viral in China has made its way to social media channels in Singapore and people are not impressed.

In a Facebook video posted last Thursday (April 18), a customer can be heard asking for a durian rice bowl in Mandarin from a street hawker who is throwing several chunks of the pungent tropical fruit into a wok filled with oil.

The hawker then asks if she has any dietary restrictions and whether she can eat spicy food.

Getting the go-ahead, he proceeds to add julienned carrots, monosodium glutamate (MSG), garlic and chopped chilli padi into the wok.

When he drops in a handful of whole strawberries, the customer asks with some hesitation: "Why are you adding strawberries to this, boss?"

"This is a side dish," he responds. "Do you not eat (strawberries)?"

Startled, the customer stammers: "Ah, I – I – I eat (them), I eat (them)."

She then asks if the dish is done and he replies in the affirmative — only to continue adding sugar, soy sauce, coriander and chopped green onion before finally ladling the mixture onto a bowl of white rice.

At one point, the customer comments that she is able to smell the dish.

"Is it very fragrant?" the hawker asks.

"(It's) very 'explosive'," she responds.

The customer concludes at the end of the video that the dish tastes good, but it does not suit her taste.

The video, posted as a topic of interest by Singaporean durian stall D197 Durian Brother on Thursday (April 18), has received 878,000 views, 4,100 reactions, 950 comments and 2,500 shares as of Monday afternoon.

In its Facebook caption, the company joked in Chinese: "It would be better to switch to selling this."

Much like the baffled customer in the video, it appears that many online users were unsure about the appeal of such a dish, calling it "crazy" and "anyhow".

One Facebook comment went: "Seeing (it) makes me want to throw up."

Another asked: "Will I be poisoned if I eat (this)?" 

One Facebook user remarked that one's blood sugar would surely "spike" after eating such a dish, writing: "Durian is already a high-sugar fruit, still add sugar, still add strawberries... Doesn't this ruin the original flavour of durian...?"

The top comment on the post read: "I personally feel that... the deliciousness of durian is wasted. The best way to eat durian is to eat it directly from the shell."

Others dealt with their discomfort by joking about it: "I finally understand how Italians feel when they see pineapple on pizza."

The hawker in the video said that the recipe — which he calls a "trade secret" — was given to him by his cousin from the Guangxi autonomous region in southern China.

The hawker charges 48 Chinese yuan (S$9) for a bowl and sells about five or six bowls a day.

A similar video posted last Monday on Douyin — the Chinese equivalent of short-form video platform TikTok — shows an almost identical conversation between a different customer and hawker.

In his caption, the user "Genius Yawen" shares: "(I) heard it is a very popular snack."

It is not clear whether or not it is the same hawker, but the ingredients and method of cooking look much the same, apart from the addition of green chillies and cumin. This hawker also refers to a "Guangxi cousin" and prices the snack at 48 Chinese yuan.

In the Douyin video, the hawker even tells the customer that this cousin in Guangxi eats "a snack (of the dish) every three days and a meal (of it) every seven days".

Even if it was a popular dish, Chinese social media users poked fun at it as well. As of Monday afternoon, the video had 1,200 likes, 430 comments, 240 saves and 11,000 shares.

Still, many viewers marvelled at the generous serving of durian given, saying that they would not be able to buy the same amount of raw durian elsewhere for such a low price.

Some even offered to pay more for just the durian without its fixings.

However, on Facebook, there were those who said that there are similarly unusual ways to eat durian even closer to home, pointing to the Malay condiment tempoyak, which is a fermented durian paste used to combat excess durian production.

Tempoyak is commonly used in curries and sauces in Malaysia and Indonesia, and can even be found in Singapore.

In May last year, the "king of fruits" went viral on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, with many Chinese online users sharing their own uncommon ways of eating durian.

These included salting and steaming the fruit, and even pairing it with instant noodles.