During the nearly two years that I was ‘stranded’ in Australia during the coronavirus pandemic, one thing I missed about being away from the Philippines was my mango with breakfast every day. Many people say the Philippine mangoes are the best in the world (I’m one of those people) but they can’t be exported to Australia because of quarantine restrictions. So, during my time in Australia, I spent some time trying different mango varieties to find the closest to the Philippine Carabao mango.

The most popular mango variety in Australia is the Kensington Pride, also known as the Bowen special or ‘KP’. Some people say it tastes like a cross between an Indian mango and a Philippine mango, but I found them to be closer to the Southeast Asian varieties. After the KP, the Calypso variety is the most popular in Australia, and these are the two varieties that you usually see in the shops first (around the end of September) followed by the much larger R2D2 variety in October and the Honey Gold variety in November.

I tried all four varieties, although I already knew the R2D2 didn’t taste anything like a Philippine mango. The Calypso and Honey Gold mangoes were always the nicest looking mangoes in the shops – the Calypso with its beautiful reddish-pink blush and the Honey Gold with its golden yellow skin – but neither had the full flavour of the Carabao mango. 

Early in the season the Calypso mangoes seemed to be under-ripe (and the early Honey Golds were much the same). Even later on, most of the Calypso mangoes I tried were closer to the texture of a soft apple than a mango. The later Honey Golds I sampled had more of a typical mango texture,  but neither of those two varieties were as sweet and juicy as the Carabao.

The KP was the interesting one because the mangoes were much more variable in size and how they looked depending on where they were grown. But I did find two ‘brands’ of KPs that were pretty close to the Philippine Carabao in flavour and sweetness (but not in looks because they were rounder). They were the ‘Gilbert Gold’ and the ‘Horseshoe Lagoon’. Some of the ‘Gilbert Gold’ fruit had a slight pink blush

These aren’t sub-varieties as such of the KP. As far as I could find out through online research, they are brands given to them by large growers. ‘Horseshoe Lagoon’ appears to be the name of a large mango plantation in North Queensland between Townsville and Ayr, whilst ‘Gilbert Gold’ is probably a name given to the KP output of one of the large mango plantations around the Gilbert River further north.

Just as the Carabao mango can vary in quality depending on where it is grown in the Philippines (the best are reputed to come from Guimaras), the KP varies in quality depending on where it is grown. The local climate, soil types and how it is fertilised are all factors that come into play.

What I did notice through all of my tastings was that the KP can be quite variable in quality. Much more so than the variations in quality of the Carabao mango (which range from good to very good). The KPs I tasted ranged from good to disappointing.

The ‘Gilbert Gold’ mangoes were consistently good but they seemed to be on the market for only 2-3 weeks. In the Philippines I was used to being able to buy good mangoes for at least 50 weeks of the year. 

A lot of the KP mangoes on the market from September through to February don’t carry any ‘brands’ although some carry the name of the farm or grower. So for much of the time you are taking pot luck with the ‘unbranded’ KPs. And some are not very good. One day I saw some large KPs at a fruit shop labelled as “Premium Mangoes” and bought two to try. They were from a farm called Mountain Valley Mangoes and branded as “AVSA Palumbo”. They looked ripe on the outside but one of them was soft and mushy inside, and flavourless. The other one, although it looked and felt identical, wasn’t bad, but at $4 each (more than four times the price of a Philippine Carabao mango) my one good AVSA Palumbo was an expensive purchase.