How to Pick the Best Banana

The tip in picking the best banana: the perfect banana must look small, has black spots all over, and imperfect in every way. The blacker the skin, the better.


My mother would always buy this ugly looking tordan banana. Not only is it cheaper, it is also sweeter than the more famous, exported lakatan banana which is bigger, longer, has a brighter yellow color, smoother and more flawless skin. While the more familiar food-for-the-gods lakatan has its own merits, the more exotic food-for-the-monkeys tordan is locally more preferred by banana experts, the mothers. For inside the thin, ugly black skin, is a firm, flawless, white, juicy and sweet banana flesh.


As the saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." This means that the tordan banana can only be judged sweeter when it is tasted.

Thus proves true another saying, handed from mother to daughter down to generations, the golden banana rule: "Don't judge the banana by its skin."