The avocados and tomatoes have to be stacked very carefully on top of the harder things or else they get bruised or squished. The garlic gets lost somewhere at the bottom. The bananas have to be kept apart from each other like moody siblings in the backseat of a car, unless I want all of them to turn brown at once. And god forbid something goes rotten in there that I didn’t notice, because then I have to fight off the fruit flies. Until recently, I have always thought that anything can be a fruit bowl. Woven baskets, massive serving bowls, a storage bin—anything could be used as a fruit bowl as long as it had edges to keep fruit from rolling away. But the TikTok-famous Emile Henry storage bowl has changed my thinking. The genius part of the cork cover is that it’s flat so all the things that bruise easily don’t roll together and bump up against one another. They stay put exactly where I leave them, When I first received the bowl, I thought it was massive. It’s 14 inches in diameter and 6 inches tall. It takes up a good chunk of my kitchen island, though when I place it on a corner some of the bowl can sit off of the edge. (It’s not tippy in the slightest, so I’m not worried about it falling off.) And once I saw that I no longer had to spread the contents of my fruit bowl across the counter, it was clear that ultimately it was a space saver. It’s also just a gorgeous piece of kitchen counter decor. It comes in a variety of colors —I got one in burgundy to match my salt crock and sugar container — and while I was originally skeptical of the cork, it looks very stylish. The fruit really pops against it. My kitchen counters are for cooking, not for storing fresh fruits and vegetables, and it’s been a relief to get that valuable space back. I can even clean my countertops more easily now that everything is collected in one place. I’ve had the Emile Henry storage bowl for nearly six months, I know there’s no going back to the days of random containers as produce bowls. If they could talk, my countertops and the ripe bananas would thank me. Editor’s note: The writer received product samples, but all opinions are their own.
