One thing I noticed while eating the many varieties of mangoes we were lucky to taste across four Caribbean islands on this trip was that many of them are ripe when they have black spots. This is actually a good thing, not a bad thing: it signals to us that they are ready to eat, and we should eat them right away! This was the case for the Julie and mango longues, and especially true for the starch and dodo mangoes. We got told from multiple vendors, as well as our smoothie guy who gifted us the five cutlass mangoes in Port of Spain, that black spots were a positive thing. The funny thing is that I told Chris that this would absolutely not fly in the U.S. You could never have a display of mostly black spotted mangoes in the U.S. and actually get those to sell — no freaking way!

The strange thing, though, is that black spots with mango varieties readily available in the U.S. — so Ataulfo (champagne, our default from March to June) and Kent — actually are not good when they have black spots. For these two mango varieties that come from Mexico, black spots are a sign that they have really gone bad or are about to go bad. I know this after peeling and cutting hundreds and hundreds of mangoes over the years. Sometimes we don’t monitor the mangoes closely enough, and the black spots appear. And once the spots appear, this is truly a sign of rot. Those parts don’t taste good, or they actually smell off. Some of them become mush in the parts where the black spots are.

The American public is quite superficial when it comes to produce. Everyone wants picture-perfect fruit and vegetables, oftentimes at the expense of taste, flavor, and even nutrition. It’s partly why mainstream supermarket tomatoes look super red and plump but often taste like nothing or are mealy in texture inside. So I doubt that even if Trinidad and Tobago could export mango longue or starch mangoes to the U.S. that they would do well from a sales perspective outside of ethnic markets in neighborhoods with a large Caribbean population. That is sad, a real loss for someone like me who wants every single mango variety possible at the tips of her fingers!