Josh Malina is a fruit blogger who also sometimes eats other foods. These posts were originally published last year on Chirbah, for the fruit community in Charlottesville, VA. We can only hope that his journey continues here in Miami.
Integral Yoga Natural Foods on Preston Avenue has a watermelon you should eat.
So you think you know watermelon. Are you a tapper? A squeezer? A shaker? A sniffer?
Everybody and their grandma has some strategy for picking out the perfect melon, but I’m skeptical. Does any of this hocus pocus really work?
Being the empiricist my mama raised me to be, I decided to do an experiment. I bought three melons from three stores and forced my colleagues to eat and review them.
I am very excited to share the results.
Trader Joe’s Conventional Watermelon
Too bad their watermelon also suck!!!TJ has made a poor showing this summer w/r/t fruit. But just as the leaves of the peach tree turn over, so do we here at Chirbah come to TJ again with open hearts and open minds.
The Trader Joe’s watermelon tasted like water — so don’t buy this watermelon unless it’s being used solely for hydration.
Whole Foods Organic Baby Watermelon
This organic melon was better, and actually a slim majority of my colleagues “would recommend it” (6 out of 11), but I still think it was pretty mediocre. It just wasn’t sweet enough.
Integral Yoga Natural Foods Local Orange Watermelon
This was a great melon — and my first orange one! 100% of my colleagues “would recommend it”. They are grown at a Virginia farm called Riverside Farm.
Aggregate Results
Some choice comments about the melons:
TJ: “meh”
WF: “Good, but not my favorite watermelon”
IY: “delicioso”
Check out full review data here.
* If you consider yourself some kind of Harry Potter of melon picking, please let me know. I will fund an experiment where we put your method to the test against randomness.
Love, Josh