Fitch Restaurant Ratings says in a special report on pitayas, a fruit grown mostly in southeast Asia and the Americas, that the so-called dragon fruit is pretty good but not great.
The dragon fruit is sold all over the UAE, presumably because there is high demand from Filipino and other southeast Asian expatriates. It is a large fruit – a bit larger than a big mango – and has a distinctive bright red/pink outer shell. The pitaya is eaten by first cutting it in half, revealing a solid white pulp speckled with tiny black seeds. The pulp can then be consumed with a spoon (much like with a kiwi) or cut up into smaller slices and separated from the rind, which is easy to do.
The fruit isn't too bad. It's watery with a slightly sour-sweet aftertaste. Its flavor, however, is not very strong, and that's the fruit's biggest drawback. It simply doesn't taste like much. Hence it's just okay, and gets a BBB rating.
"Given lower expected taste volumes in 2009, dragon fruit will be highly reliant on tapping the margins of the taste spectrum and re-positioning itself among other fruits to maintain good taste sensations," says Joe Tastebud, Senior Director in Fitch's Food Institutions team.
The dragon fruit:
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