Kiwis? Please—what a joke. Pomegranates? Old news. Dragon fruit? So five years ago.

“Everyone and his brother gets a dragon fruit,” said Chaia Frishman, 43 years old, who scours New York this time of year to discover new exotic fruit. “I don’t think it’s a competition. I think it’s more like a challenge.”

Fall delivers a cool weather, crisp leaves and also a spike in the sales of mangosteens, cherimoya and other offbeat fruit. The bonanza is propelled by Rosh Hashana, the two-day celebration of the Jewish new year, where some follow a tradition of trying a new fruit on the second day of the holiday—Tuesday, this year. And as more varieties become available, the quest to find the weirdest fruit has grown fevered, especially in the New York region.

A limited pomegranate crop one year sent demand so high at Brooklyn’s Ouri’s Market that the store limited purchases to one per customer. “People were fighting,” said store president Ilan Galili. “It was $6 a pomegranate, and if you had it, it was better than drugs.”

Loosened U.S. import restrictions over the years have unleashed a fruit avalanche, including jackfruit, which weighs as much as 100 pounds and tastes like pulled pork after cooking; monstera fruit, scaly green, shaped like a cucumber but tasting like pineapple; and tamarind fruit, brown pods that are shucked and taste sweet and sour.