So tonight started like many nights around my house – Jerry, Panda, and myself hanging out, watching some TV, grabbing a bite to eat, and then going to H-Mart out of boredom and wanting to pick up some snacks. I was randomly in the mood to get a couple of apples, and suddenly it dawned on us: an apple showdown! With so many options and opinions on the tasty fruit, we were certain this would be a great way to settle the debate once and for all. Luckily, H-Mart was well stocked and had 7 varieties of red apples for us to sample so they were all purchased. The contenders for the evening would go on to be Cameo, Rome, Braeburn, Fuji, Gala, Red Delicious, and Pink Lady.

Here you can see a few of the contestants before cutting:

Jerry handled the cutting of the apples, and also placed them out on plates. We actually thought this through a bit better than the snack wrap showdown from a few weeks ago and made sure that we didn’t know which apple was which while placing them out (we did however hide each apple’s brand sticker on the bottom of each plate, blind to all of us while sampling).

The sliced apples in front of numbers that corresponded with our score sheets:

Panda and Jerry excited to begin the testing process:

Panda in deep thought while analyzing one of the samples:

Jerry enjoying a bite:

And I assume this was me not enjoying a bite:

Once we got underway, we all made notes of our thoughts on each apple. I stuck to more traditional descriptions such as “crisp”, “soft”, or “sour”, while panda drew random images (mushrooms, houses, BMW logos, poop, and t-shirts….still not quite sure the relevance to any of these), and Jerry preferred a mix of usual terms, random expletives, and comparisons between apples and wet donuts (be sure to check out the full gallery here for close-ups of everyone’s sheets, along with numerous other shots).

After sampling all 7 entries, we checked the bottom of the plates and wrote down which apple was which. After unscrambling the order of which apple was on which plate and which score each one had, the winners were revealed:


(in the event the photo is hard to read, the order was Pink Lady in 1st, Fuji 2nd, Braeburn/Cameo tied for 3rd, Red Delicious in 5th, Rome in 6th, and Gala in 7th)

Pink Lady was hands down the winner, as predicted by Laura in a gchat conversation before the test happened. I applaud her apple expertise and general fruit skills. Nice work, dragon. We were all drawn to the sour (but not over the top) taste and nice crispness, and would highly recommend it.

Thanks for checking out this exciting installment of the liketoeat food showdown series, and again, check out the full gallery here for even more coverage.