After we found out about the world’s most expensive melons being farmed right here in Malaysia, we asked the folks at Mono Farm to let us try them. Not only did they give us melons to try, they also gave us a tour of the farm itself.
Japanese melons usually also come with super high price tags. In May 2019, two melons from Hokkaido sold at auction for JPY 5 million (about RM190,000). But luckily for us, the farm in Malaysia grows these premium Japanese melons and are selling them at a small fraction of the price—at RM168 each.
Some of you would still say that that price for a mere melon is still an ungodly amount as you can get honeydew melons for under RM10. But how different are these premium melons? And are they really that good?
We made two separate visits—one to pick out our melons before they were ripe, and one where we harvested them. It took about a week to wait between choosing our melons and the harvest, as Mono Farm directors Seh Cheng Siang and Mohd Sofian bin Ali advised us that the fruits tasted best at a specific date.
After trying the melons right at the farm itself, I was surprised at how soft and jelly-like it was. It was also sweet but with a more complex almost fermented flavour to it. According to the Mono Farm directors, the fruits tasted best at the farm itself and at a certain time, so it might not be the most flexible of fruits.
Still, me and Raywen tried the melons, and the experience was heightened by how it was cut and presented—which you can watch in the video. But seeing as we were trying them with rose-tinted glasses, we also brought the melons back to the office for some of the other team members to try and give feedback—and the video for that will be posted soon, so stay tuned!
