Apple Review #30: Opal

I don’t care much for grocery store apples, but I do love me a good grocery store. I recall in reading White Noise way back in the day, that Don DeLillo captured the sort of overwhelming sensory assault from the grocery store — but also the comfort of it, the almost psychospiritual vibe of it. You walk down the aisles and it feels like you’re traveling a corridor of video-game colors — bright Atari shit in every direction, food in requisite Minecraft blocks, branding ranging from old-timey classics to new postmodern on-trend dystopian surreality. It’s glorious and disorienting and frustrating and I really do enjoy the grocery store experience just for how powerful and deranged it feels. WELCOME TO THE HALL OF FOOD SCIENCE. BEHOLD THE COLORS. TASTE THE SALT AND THE SUGARS. THIS AISLE IS HEALTH! THIS AISLE IS CAVITIES! EAT THE TIDEPODS AND WASH THE PIZZAS, ROLL IN THE MEAT, DRINK THE FIZZY DRINKS, WAKE UP, DON’T MIND THE SHRINKFLATION — SNACKTOWN AWAITS.

Of course, the produce section is often a bit less exciting — though a good produce section is a thing to behold, too. Humid and rainforesty, bright greens and oranges and reds. Shelves flush with lush vegetation. The gleam of the peppers, the feel of the yams, and of course the shine of the apples.

I did just come back from a grocery store and it was… less this, at least in the produce section. Everything looked rough — browned at the edges, antiqued with the sepia of time and decay. It was not a good situation. Maybe we disappeared the people who pick the produce. America, I guess, in 2025.

To circle back around, there are few grocery store apples I tend to like — most are too sweet or too old and shitty to regard as anything but a thing to hurl at a bear in the hopes it stops chasing you. But there are two I liked in the past, and so it’s a good time to revisit those today — and first up of those two?

The Opal.

My review of an Opal from (shudder) Walmart, late-Oct:

Here’s what I want you to imagine —

I want you to imagine fruit punch.

It’s red, right? So no, not that fruit punch. Instead, let’s imagine we blended together pretty much all the fruits that are orange and yellow. I’m talking, what? Pineapple. Pear. Orange. Lemon. Passion fruit because, okay, it’s purple on the outside I think but it’s got orange goop innards. Blend those fruits together, and that, to me, was the experience of the Opal apple.

Which is to say, I actually really liked it. It’s got good crunch, good juice, probably a 60/40 split on sweetness to tartness. It is, like its exterior, a sunny apple. It wants you to like it. It wants to be liked. It hopes you’ll vote for it for Prom Queen, or Most Likely To Be The Bestest Apple Ever, or for President of The United Stems of Applemerica. I don’t know that it deserves all those kudos and plaudits, but you know, it’s a truly pleasant apple. If I had a complaint, it’s that maybe some of its similar-looking cohorts in the apple world tend to offer a kind of lip-slicking or even buzzy lemon-lime tartness on the lips, and this falls just short of that.

And the texture is good but not great — it’s got just a few extra seconds on the clock, taking it into too much chew territory.

Still, I love this apple. Good apple, maybe even a great apple.

I feel like this is going to get an 8.0 out of 10 from me. Question is, my other favorite grocery store apple is the Cosmic Crisp —

Will it beat it?

Stay tuned, apple dorks. We shall see. We shall see.

Video of me chomping down here.

Opal: A sunny happy-go-lucky gee-shucks gee-whiz gosh-darn fruit-punchy-but-with-all-the-orange-yellow-fruits apple

Reviews so far this year: Honeycrisp, Sweetie, Crimson Crisp, Knobbed Russet, Cortland, Maiden’s Blush, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Reine des Reinettes, Ingrid Marie, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Holstein, Suncrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Opalescent, Orleans Reinette, Black Gilliflower, Red Delicious Double Feature, Jonathan, Ruby Mac, Crimson Topaz, Esopus Spitzenburg, Mutsu, Hunnyz, Winesap, Stayman Winesap, Winter Banana, Ribston Pippin, Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet