Q. When eating two different fruits of the same brocho and status, you are supposed to say the brocho on the “choviv” or the most liked one. Does that mean just pleasant because of its good taste, or does that include you wanting to honor the one who gave you that fruit?
A. Chashukei Chemed (Brochos 39a) deals with a similar question, when the fruit was prepared by a daughter one appreciates, he indicates that it is also considered choviv. He quotes Horav Eliashiv zt’l, that preference should be given as choviv also to food received from a tzadik, that one greatly appreciates. However. he debates when the preferred flavor contradicts the more emotional feelings, which is the one to choose to recite the brocho on.
Piskei Teshuvos (211: 1: n. 2) mentions that when eating at the table of a Godol or great Sage, one should select as choviv, what that great personality chooses.
Horav Shlomo Miller’s Shlit’a opinion is that the choviv priority, refers only to the actual taste of the food being consumed, and not to other emotional feelings and considerations.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Shlomo Miller Shlit’a