Why Café Avocados Are Always Perfectly Green & Yours Are Bruised As Shit

It’s this 20-minute window that makes avocados such a mixed-bag of the produce aisle. Will you make a delicious, fresh guacamole to slather on your burritos tonight? Or will you be gnawing hard chunks of rubber that cost you $3.50 and your pride to pretend are ‘good’.

Yet for all avocados are the devil, café’s and restaurants always seem to have perfectly green, perfectly ripe avocados ready to serve up to you on two instead of an inner-city two-bedder. What the hell gives.

Given the PEDESTRIAN.TV Sydney office is approx. 30 seconds away from City Edge, a.k.a. the home of the best avo toast in the city (get it on rye, with chilli), we decide to have a chat to owner Tommy Chen about why his avos are always mint and ours are rotting hell balls.

Know Your Avocados

“The type of avocados you buy is very important,” he told us. “A lot of people don’t realise that there are so many types of avocados that you can get. There are certain types that when you mash them up it keeps better.

“Some avos you buy, you smash ‘em, and they go brown in almost seconds. Some, it could be hours.

“Hass avocados have the most texture and flavour, they’re the best.”

Second best are Shepherd’s avocados (those alarmingly green ones), which will do in a pinch but are no proper substitute.

It’s also a good idea to source your avocados wisely (read: get an avo dealer.)

“I get mine from the markets and I know my growers up there, and they always give me the best avocados,” says Tommy. Noted.

Make Like Beyoncé And Add Some Lemon Aid

If your avos are about to tip from the ‘okay’ stage to the ‘brown bin juice’ stage, smash ’em up and stick a little lemon juice in them.

“Lemon helps,” says Tommy. “When you have smashed avocados, put a little lemon juice through it, mash it, then just have a little bit on top.”

Stop, Look, Refrigerate

If you’re a normal human, you’ll keep avocados in the fruit bowl like everyone else. (Next to the bananas if you want to ripen them up in a hurray.)

But once they’ve started to turn, get those babies in the fridge asap.

“With avocados you’ve gotta be careful,” says Tommy. “Once it gets soft, you have to keep it in the fridge, you can’t leave it out too much longer, because when it gets to that point where it can’t be saved.”

Kill your darlings, not your avos.

Photo: Instagram / @goodthingsmp.