It’s Instagrammable, but is it edible? Naaman Zhou sets out to discover if the dish, devised as a vegan alternative to a roast, is worth the effort

The chef at the fancy restaurant across the road warns me, as I load a watermelon into his smoker, that he had tried this the day before.

“Ah yeah,” I say, hoping for some expert advice on how to the nail the recipe.

“It was disgusting,” he replies.

After more than three days of preparation, I am near the end of my journey to create a hot, smoked watermelon.

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Devised by New York restaurant Ducks Eatery, the smoked watermelon is exactly what it says it is. Billed as a vegan alternative to a Thanksgiving roast, it is designed to look like a ham, right down to the charred glaze and soft, meaty texture.

I set out to recreate the smoked watermelon using a recipe from a Queensland watermelon farmer and plate up the result for my colleagues to try. I am eager to hear their verdict.

But first the recipe says I must hew the fruit into a rough approximation of a ham, complete with scored top. The next step is brining the melon for three days in a solution of salt, cumin and coriander seeds. It then gets placed into a smoker and, finally, baked.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Naaman Zhou with the smoked watermelon before it was cooked. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

I begin the process in my small, shared apartment, disrupting my housemates who are bemused but accommodating.

Peeling the watermelon is quite easy. The pith is thick and grants me plenty of wriggle room. Cutting it is worry-free and beautifully undelicate. I slough off rind, melon, whatever – everything I do makes it more ham-like. White splotches of pith in the fruit look like marbled fat. I feel positive this will work.

For the next two days, the watermelon sits in the fridge in a bath of brine. When people come over I bring it out like an underwhelming Victorian curio. Here it is. It’s the watermelon I have carved to look like a ham. What have I been up to? Not much, but I did carve a watermelon into a ham.

I take it to the office on Tuesday morning. I have an oven, but no smoker or barbecue in my apartment. Nomad, a fancy restaurant across the road, has been kind enough to let me use their kitchen. I will be in charge of the recipe and the cooking, and I alone will be responsible for the result.

Parking nearby is impossible, so I take the watermelon on public transport. I cop a lot of odd looks because I have chosen a completely clear tub and my watermelon looks like a brain in embalming fluid. This is my cross to bear.

At Nomad we load the sopping, pink lump into the smoker.

There is a buzz about the place. The resident smoke expert says he heard we were coming, so yesterday he tested a small slice of watermelon himself. The melon will take on the smoky taste quickly – being mostly water – but the key to colour is time, he says. His slice was in for an hour and “came out a bit brown”.

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Not very promising.

Then he tells me how disgusting it was. That is, of course, worse. “Maybe if you smoked it with herbs or flowers or something,” he says. “But with just wood … it’s no good.”

I leave the watermelon to its fate. One hour later, the watermelon looks exactly the same, except it is sweating.

In desperation I decide to deviate from the recipe. To char the top, we sprinkle it with sugar, and put it into a 300C oven. After five minutes it has taken on a surprising amount of colour. I baste it in olive oil, it glistens. I garnish it with rosemary. It looks like meat.

After nearly four days of preparation and two hours of cooking, what emerges from the oven is plated up. Several excited colleagues join me for the tasting. It looks edible. It smells good.

But it isn’t.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest After nearly four days of preparation, the smoked watermelon is plated up. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

In the end the watermelon tastes, in the words of my colleagues, like “an evil Christmas”, “an old packet of cigarettes” or simply “regret”. It is the exact temperature of a human body that isn’t doing so well. Someone likens it to warm sashimi, or a piece of fruit that has been left in the sun all day. It is a hot, wet mess.

The most positive reaction is that it is like babaganoush, but with a watermelon aftertaste. I thought it wasn’t that bad. It was not nice, but it was bearable.

But watermelon – normally – is one of my favourite fruits, and with time I came to hate what I had created. This had nothing of its crispness, sweetness or subtlety. Smoked and tepid, I had created the anti-melon.

I spent four days making something good into something bad. The horrible aroma lingered on my clothes. In New York they sell this for $75 USD. Yes, I had successfully made the hot, smoked watermelon, but at what cost?