Yellow watermelon in San Francisco?

Noodles wrote about watermelon and some people mentioned yellow watermelon in their replies. I prefer my melon jaundiced and seeded and spherical. Is there yellow watermelon for sale in either the Sunset or the Richmond district? Where else in San Francisco has it turned up?

[Mul]

I recently tried yellow watermelon while traveling to Asia, it was delicious. Where can I find yellow watermelon in San Francisco Bay Area?

[Jim]

Trader Joes on Masonic had yellow watermelons a week or so ago. I would call before going over...you know TJ's here today gone tomorrow!

[Mul]

Thanks.

I found yellow water melon at Ranch 99; it's about 49 cents/lbs, seedless. They have a Taiwan variety but not seedless.

I bought a perfect yellow watermelon from a farmer at the Saturday morning Ferry Plaza market. His stand is to the left of the clocktower as you face it, in the front market area. The melon sprang open when I pressed my knife to its hide. Five dollars for a fairly big sphere.

Were the taste and texture perfect?

O yes.

Try the farmers market @ the peir on saturdays. Correct it's not richmond but they have any thing that is in season.

Rainbow had them about a week ago. I haven't tried them.

Last year I picked up a few at the Real Foods on Stanyan (near Parnassus). The beautiful thing there was that they had samples of every type of watermelon they had out so you could really figure out what you wanted to bring home. At peak, they had more than five at once.

I've been missing that Real Foods since I've moved over to the Polk gulch. Our version of the same store sucks in comparison (very few samples, less tasty and fresh produce).

God I love that store.

I picked up a delicious yellow fleshed melon at the Whole Foods on California and Van Ness a couple weeks ago. It became a delicious salad with basil, pine nuts, red onion, feta and a light vinegrette.

The main difference between Yellow and Red watermellon is the color. While at one store the yellow may be better than the red or vice versa (different farms, different harvests etc.) there is no inherent difference in their flavor as far as I know.

I agree with you about seeds. I just haven't found seedless watermellons to be anywhere near as sweet as seeded. As far as shape, its irrelevant, but the mellon should generally be heavy for its size (depending on the time of the year) and be "bruised" on one side.

IMO its been a pretty lame mellon season, but it is also a VERY late one, so the best is clearly still yet to come.

I haven't shopped much in the Sunset or Richmond, but I would be surprised if Andronico's didn't have both kinds.

Be surprised.

As to shape, it so happens that there are very, very good reasons to prefer spheres.

I agree. Yellow vs red doesn't seem to have much to do with flavor. I've tried yellow only twice, but was not impressed. Best mellon this year was from Trader Joe's, yesterday. Bright red and ... 'scuse me, got to go have some more.