Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where we explore cooking, eating, and the foods of the world from the safety of your computers and my kitchen. I’m Jon O’Guin, and I don’t know why that intro was so polished, but I’m not questioning it. Today’s a mellow day, boys and girls and others. So mellow, in fact, that the mellowness almost stopped this post from happening a couple times. So crack a drink and grab a seat, as we talk Mela.

A Mel-uv-a Good Time

Not my best work, but they can’t all be the Pieta. Anywho, today’s topic is Mela. Mela is, of course, the 2000 action masala film starring Aamir Khan, called by some the “biggest movie star in the world” for his popularity in India and China, and his brother Faisal…Oh, I’m being told that’s not the topic of today. Then it must be the INSTITUTION of “mela”, a Sanskrit word meaning “gathering”, that nowadays is kind of like saying “fest” in English: it denotes a festival, or ongoing quasi-celebratory gathering and sharing of food, music, and community. Still no? Then is it Mela coffee, made in Wenatchee Washington, about 20 miles from Leavenworth, where I work? The answer is none of these. No, today we’re talking about Mela Watermelon Water.  

Seen here CRISP AND COOL. And looking a LITTLE like it says “hatermelon”.

A relatively young company, that produced its first cans in summer of 2019, Mela is a Seattle based company that sells, well, ‘watermelon water’. If you missed out on this trend, as a quick explanation: a couple years back, there was a minor explosion in the industry of “infused waters”. Infused waters are, very simply, waters that have had fruits and/or herbs and botanicals added to them. Like, have you ever been to a fancy restaurant where all the water came with slices of lemon in it? That’s an infused water. The same idea was expanded on in spas, and then there was a brief explosion of tools and recipes for bringing infused water to your day-to-day life: things like water bottles that could hold chopped fruit suspended in the water. The idea is that you get the flavors and vitamins of the fruit, without all the calories and sugar.

This trend was then joined, inevitably, by companies seeking to replace YOU having to do anything: why make your own lemon infused water, when you can buy pre-infused water? Into this idea came a couple outliers, and some overlap with agua frescas. Watermelon Water, for instance, is just slightly diluted, and potentially flavored, watermelon juice. Much closer to a watermelon agua fresca than an “infused water”.

Most infused waters are still, you know, transparent.

It’s a drink my family has gotten into thanks to Italian food. Specifically, the local Italian restaurant/deli that my family likes, and that my mother turned into a twice-weekly stop for lunch when her work schedule had her getting home at 1 PM. They stocked it, we tried it, mom liked it, so it came back time and again. And then, while at Central Market, we found that they carried all four flavors of Mela, so we bought them all to try them out.

I then developed a clever tie-in that would allow me to fit the tasting into a broader theme I had planned for the month…and then failed to get the recipe I needed done in time, because I was being too chill. Specifically: I was half-working on making this month a “Seoul Food” Month, because, as noted, my family got onto a bit of a Korean kick out of nowhere. With the idea being that every dish would be like, a Korean version of a dish people already know, or a mixture of familiar dishes, including Korean ones. So Monday’s post was supposed to include a Watermelon Soju Cocktail, a drink made by blending watermelon flesh with soju, and then straining the liquid back into the emptied out watermelon half to serve. Very simple, visually striking, and a dish that had been recommended to me as a nice Korean drink from MULTIPLE sources.

Very legitimate, and serious sources.

But then I ran out of time to go pick up a mini watermelon to MAKE it before my getaway last weekend, and I didn’t feel like rushing myself on Sunday/making it without letting Nate try any. So now Monday’s post doesn’t have any watermelon…but I don’t have anything else I really want to say about aguas frescas, and honestly, we could use the space drinking these cans frees up, so I decided to do it anyway. So here’s a breakdown of the 4 flavors of Mela, and our thoughts. (editor’s note: And no, Mela didn’t pay me to say this. The only people who pay for things on this site are the Patrons. I will definitely let all of you know if that ever changes.)

Regular

Now, to be mellow, let’s all just pretend the earlier picture wasn’t clearly just this one, just zoomed-in.

Just as a warning/pre-note: I was going to include pictures of all the different versions out of their can, but my brother agree if there WERE actual visual differences, or if I was just seeing things based on the coloring of the can. Like, I feel some of them were lighter than others, but it didn’t show up when I took a couple pictures, so you just get the cans, and the one shot from earlier: they all looked mostly like that.

Regular is, well, regular. It’s watermelon. As Nate says “It tastes like what it is: real, blended up watermelon.” The only remarkable thing about it is that, when you divorce watermelon from the texture of consuming it, the sweetness becomes more pronounced.

Pineapple

This can is eerily reflective. Like, you can see distinct fingers on my hand by the top.

This is actually the type that our local place sells, so it’s the version of Mela we were most familiar with. It’s also the ORIGINAL extra flavor: when Mela launched in 2019, there was only Regular and Pineapple.

Nate: The…backing water feels different. If that makes sense? Like, the physical liquid feels different, probably because there’s Pineapple juice mixed in. It tastes…maybe a little sweeter? But that’s more of an aftertaste/back end thing.

I don’t know that I agree that it’s sweeter, but that the added acidity and slightly thicker liquid take away some of the “height” of the original flavor, rounding it out into something that feels more cohesive and enduring. It’s not a flash of sweetness and it’s gone.

Ginger

We had to turn to hide our shame from the reflective eye of you all.

This has a definite taste of raw ginger to it. That slightly spicy, slightly earthy little nip of acidity.

Nate: This feels like it takes it in the completely opposite direction. The Pineapple made things fuller, this feels like it’s stripped things down. Like it’s “cleaner”, with less watermelon flavor and less sweetness.

I also think there’s a slight silt-y quality to it. Not in an unpleasant way, but it feels a little more ‘raw’/real, a little less processed. Which I assume is just a product of the ginger’s introduction, since I assume they’re all equally processed.

Passionfruit

Barely even fit the flavor name in the shot, because we were flanked by chickens and a cat.

As I pour it into the glasses, this one has the most noticeable bouquet. Passion fruit is a pretty strong flavor/smell, once you learn it.

Nate: This…might be my least favorite. Not that it’s bad: if I was given this I wouldn’t be unhappy. But there’s something vaguely artificial about it.

I don’t know if it’s artificial, so much as a sort of…’thinning’ of the experience. Passion fruit has a very sweet, somewhat tart, and kind of floral experience to it, and It feels muted in this presentation. I tend to think of passion fruit as having a kind of “roller-coaster” taste: it swings up high with sweetness and floral notes, then down low into a ‘darker’ tartness. Here, you swing up a little, but then you don’t swing down, instead kind of slapping into the watermelon.

As Nate says, it’s not bad, it just feels a little off-balance.

Conclusion

We agree that we LIKE all of them: that the range between our favorite and our least favorite is like dropping from an eight out of ten to a six: still GOOD, just not as good. Our agreed ranking is Pineapple (8) – Original/Ginger (7) – Passionfruit (6). And of course, you might have different tastes. Nate and I didn’t agree on everything. So if you want to try these, you can check out their website. For me, right now, I’m drunk on watermelon sugar (while healthiER than soda, Mela do still have like, 18 grams a can or something, and Nate only drank a quarter of each can, so I basically pounded an entire day’s work of sugar in like, 20 minutes.) so I’m going to go lie down.

MONDAY: EITHER VEGETABLE PASTA OR PEPPER-STUDDED CHEESE. DEPENDS ON HOW I FEEL.

THURSDAY: NOPE. MELLOW TIME NOW.