Jeffrey Friedl's Blog » Bigger than the Biggest Grapefruit You’ve Ever Seen

I was in the supermarket yesterday and did a double-take when I saw a basket of volleyball-sized grapefruit. They were huge, twice the size of any grapefruit I'd ever seen.

Except they weren't grapefruit. The sign called them banpeiyu (晩白柚). For 6,ドル I had to pick one up.

It turns out that they're a variety of something called Pomelo, a citrus fruit that I had never heard of. This particular variety comes from Viet Nam.

When I got home, I told Anthony that I had a surprise, had him close his eyes, and place it on the table in front of him. Upon opening his eyes, he broke out in uncontrollable “wow, check it out” laughter for a good half a minute. It was cute.

For some reason, I had the thought that it'd be fun to play on the size by photographing it a scene with some of his small toys, along the lines of this old post: Heavy Industries on the Kitchen Table. He liked the idea, but I still have my cold, and I just ran out of steam last night, so couldn't do it.

But he wanted to try, so he set it up with men and helicopters and trucks and such, and took a shot...

(I wanted to get a picture of him lit by his flash, so I set my camera to a manual two-second exposure, tripped my shutter, then told him to take his shot. I was holding the camera freestanding, and did a pretty good job holding still for two seconds, I think, but it's the ultra-fast flash from his camera that renders the sharper areas of the frame.)

Here's his picture...

So, today I had more energy and gave it a try myself....

I tried adding a normal pen for scale, but eventually decided that the simple shot with the egg was better for setting the scale. Anthony liked the idea, too..

So, enough playing with the camera... now was the time to eat it! (The fruit, not the camera.)

I sliced off the top inch or so, and found.... nothing.

Just slicing through the peel, though, unleashed an intense citrus smell that almost assaulted you with its ferocity. Anthony thought it was wonderful, but I wasn't so sure. My nose has experience with citrus like oranges, limes, tangerines, yuzu, grapefruit, lemons – you know, normal citrus fruits – and this one smelled just a bit “off”, like the potent oder of a cheap car freshener.

Anyway, I sliced off another inch or so, and hit paydirt...

The peel was crazy-thick and spongy, I scored the fruit vertically all around, and started to peel away...

The peel was thick, spongy, and clingy, and after 10 minutes of trying to scrape it off, it was still a mess...

It turns out that I shouldn't have wasted my time with that, because once I broke it apart, it turned out that each segment was in an easily-removable covering, much like a really dry grapefruit....

Oddly, it was not the least bit juicy. Anthony and I started breaking out the fruit part, and gave it a try. Like the smell it was close to something I knew (a grapefruit), but oddly different. But unlike the smell, the taste was a clear win. There was only the slightest hint of bitterness that screams “grapefruit” to your tastebuds, but otherwise it was very mild, perhaps even slightly sweet. Extremely mild.

We've still got half in the fridge, wrapped tight to rein in its pungent half-pleasant half-not oder.