Yesterday brought the reasonably horrific news that the humble rockmelon is potentially to blame for two deaths in New South Wales, thanks to a listeria outbreak at a single supplier. Melons from that supplier have been yanked from supermarket shelves, and customers have been advised to toss any rockmelons they bought before yesterday, as they too might carry listeria.
Willingly being a vector for deadly disease is merely the latest in a long list of crimes perpetrated by rockmelon. It is a shameful melon – which is saying something, considering the fact that the melon family is packed to the brim with substandard fruits. It has an unpleasant texture, boring taste, and is basically a crutch for those without the strength of will to put something actually interesting in their fruit salad. Fight me.
Rockmelon is the fruit of the coward, but to truly understand it one must place it in the context of all other melons. Only then can we understand just how shit rockmelon is. ‘Context’ is precisely what we aim to deliver here at Pedestrian, every single damn day. As such, here is our incredibly scientific ranking of the canonical melons, ordered by how much they suck.
6) WATERMELON
An undisputed classic. Does what it says on the tin. God’s bright idea to turn the very concept of water into a delicious, refreshing fruit you could bite into eclipses all of His other inventions (including humanity). These bad boys are 92% water, but 100% yum. Imagine squeezing that much joy out of 8%. That’s efficiency.
You can do pretty much anything with watermelon too. Chuck a slice on a fried chicken burger, if you like. At the absolute worst it’ll make your dish a bit soggier. At best? A moist flavour sensation.
Once I ate an entire watermelon while high, and even though I felt a bit yuck afterwards I didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as if I had eaten, say, an entire roast turkey. King of the melons.
5) CANARY MELON
Ignoring the fact it looks like a planet in the Star Wars prequels for just one moment, the canary melon is pretty good. It has both sweetness and tang, which automatically ranks it above the tasteless lumps of nothing which too often define melon-ness. Yum!
4) HORNED MELON
I have never eaten one of these and to my knowledge have never seen one in the flesh, but it looks cool to me. It looks like the sort of plant a character played by Matt Damon would yank out of the soil of an alien planet and then die after eating.
Apparently it tastes like a combination of banana and passionfruit, both of which are excellent fruits. Gotta give this one a thumbs up.
The fact that a melon I have actually not tasted ranks above other melons is a indictment on the whole melon family.
3) CHRISTMAS MELON
Shithouse melon. I had one once and it sucked. I have nothing else to say on the matter. If you like them I probably won’t put up a fight.
2) HONEYDEW MELON
Honestly, the only reason I didn’t put honeydew right at the fucking bottom of this shameful list is because – as far as I am aware – it hasn’t literally killed anyone in NSW recently.
Honeydew is basically the equivalent of biting into a wet packing peanut. There is absolutely no disappointment greater than approaching a buffet bowl with spoons in hand to find that the war criminal who assembled the fruit salad decided to make honeydew the main attraction. It spits in the face of both salads and the very act of eating itself.
We all know it’s there because its snot green looks mildly pleasing next to the vibrant orange of rockmelon. That’s no longer an excuse. A bland melon for bland, boring people. Ban it.
1) ROCKMELON (AKA CANTALOUPE OR ‘WORST MELON’)
Fuck you, rockmelon. Your only purpose, as I understand it, is to ruin fruit salads. If I had a dollar for every single piece of rockmelon I have joylessly plucked out of a tiny plastic tub of supermarket fruit salad, I’d have enough for a house deposit in Bondi.
Biting into a rockmelon is like biting into a big rubber. A standard rubber stained with lead pencil dust with rude slogans your fellow Year 3 mates drew on it. That’s the texture. And your reward for biting into this is the worst reward of all: the flavour of rockmelon.
The worst part is that rockmelon is that it isn’t content to just suck on its own. Nope. It insists on leaking rockmelon juice over every other part of the fruit salad, tainting it all with its repulsive flavour. Your delicious watermelon? Ruined. It’s basically a red rockmelon now.
Learning that rockmelon carries listeria like some kind of disease grenade was just icing on the cake. Hit the showers, rockmelon. You’re on notice, mate.
