My favourite (some may find this a disappointing and unadventurous choice) eating apple is a properly ripe Golden Delicious. When properly ripe, it is easy to eat, sweet and juice. I find apples such as Granny Smith to be far too acidic and very hard on the gums. Likewise many other varieties, just too hard to eat without hurting my gums.
Do you have a favourite?
I love Chantecler, Katy, Cox’s Orange Pippin and Boscoop aka Belle de Boskoop. I don’t see the point of Granny Smiths. Probably my favourite easily found in shops is Chantecler.
Ooh and Reinette Grise!
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Cox, and a Bramley for cooking.
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Braeburn if buying them. Maybe some Golden’s are ok but any I have ever bought in French supermarkets (not that many admittedly) were over sweet and cotton wool texture. Maybe there are better ones.
We have an old variety in our garden that came from a greffe ‘acquired’ from Durham botanic Garden, and is my perfect apple. Called Cat’s Head, and apparently originated in France as a Costard. Not too sweet and can use as cooker and eater.
Wooster Pearmain used to be our childhood scrumping favourite along with Cox’s Orange Pippin and of course Bramley for mum’s wonderful applie pies and charlottes. Here in France I like the early crop Arienne but nothing else tastes like a good english apple I am afraid. My daughter and her husband will be moving to N.Carolina shortly to where they have the centre of apple growing for the US so hopefully will one day get to sample some of those.
For me, Pink Lady and Chantecler. The first for eating and the second for eating and baking. But I still hanker after Cox orange pippins and Bramleys.
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My good friend back in Bretagne brought a bramley tree over from the UK and it was very successful and became enormous giving off huge sized fruit. Apples don’t do well down here plus we don’t have enough water anyway.
Same here, it’s too dry for most fruit trees, but we did have a good crop of green plums last year and have blossom onnthat tree at the moment ,so could be lucky again this year.
A wnderful surprise is the taste and texture of a Reinette Grise. A French russet apple that keeps for months in a cold place. Can sometimes be found in Grand Frais in the autumn. Marked as sourced in France but I don’t from where exactly.
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slight deviation…
just like to say that small cubes/chunks of sweet dessert apples, covered in dark chocolate… are ab fab 
I hand a tray of this around, with toothpicks for everyone to take 'em/stab and grab… as and when they want…
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Reminds me of childhood. Off out on my bike, up into the woods with a cox apple and couple of squares of Cadbury’s milk chocolate in my pocket - bliss.
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Nowadays I opt for the purist, darkest choco… to keep sugar levels at a minimum 
What could we get in the UK in the late 50s? I wonder when Bournville dark chocolate (I seem to remember a red sleeve) started to be around. For us, at home, it was Cadbury’s milk chocolate. But then who, in those days, worried about the amount of sugar we were eating?
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absolutely ! sweets of any sort were a rare treat in those days…
we munched on runner beans straight off the plant… fruit off the trees and bushes… and tomatoes… oh yummy… and Birds Eye peas were no match for the green magic us kids consumed straight out of the pods
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Belchard, nothing else comes up to standard, and they are back in season now. 
We used to chew the pods too, nice and juicy. Used to hate it when eating from the pod and a maggot would stick its head out of a pea.
At least it wasnt half a maggot 
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We’ve just discovered Story in the Biocoop, nice balance of crispness, juiciness and sweetness.
Chock, bang full of protein, mmmmmmmmmm
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Thanks all for the replies, quite a few varieties named that I’m not familiar with. I hope to experiemnt with whatever is available via the weekly market 