I have to admit I was a bit disappointed when I first tried them as well. They were good, but a good mango, lychee, or even cherimoya blow them away IMO.

bo,

those mangosteens look old to me; the 'leaves' on the top of the fruits are brown and dried out. vendors in thailand explained to me, that those leaves should always be green. so the ones you eat should not have been 100% good...

john,

i would be carefull making a judgement on fruits just by eating a few. there a too many factors that effect the taste (harvest, climate, soil, cultivar..). maybe you didn't eat good mangostens?!

the first two or three mangosteens i eat (in germany) were nothing special to me. but after eating them fresh in thailand i started to love them. right now they are in my top 5 list of all the fruit i have tasted!

felipe

The first mangosteen fruit I ever tasted we were at a small train station about midway between Rangoon and Pagan in Burma.

When we pulled into the station, several vendors came up to the windows offering a kilo of mangosteens for about 10 cents US.

I was told later the the mangosteen orchards were only a few miles from that rail station. Those were fresh!

The imported ones I've had in California and even Taiwan only reminded me of what they taste like fresh, but they weren't nearly as good.

To me, I think it tastes somewhere inbetween a really good orange and mango. I absolutely love that. The shell is really astringent...worse than a banana peel. So be careful not to get it into your mouth.