Hi California readers! SoGreen Yogurt opened TODAY and they’re having a grand opening special – here are the details:
And here’s the location:
There’s a $1 off coupon on their website! I’m going to SoGreen and Fraiche when I head to San Francisco – any other places I should check out? I’m having a MINI fro-yo tour when I get to SF (I’m VERY excited).
The pictures on the website make the yogurt look absolutely delicious – REALLY thick and creamy. If you go to SoGreen, let me know how it tastes!
Before I went to Yoberri, my friend and I checked out Berry Chill, a new yogurt couture shop that opened up in Chicago six weeks ago. Berry Chill has a special formula so their frozen yogurt is lactose free (apparently there’s milk that is lactose-free – who knew?). They’re opening up six shops throughout Chicago/suburbs and by 2009, they’ll be in New York (hopefully people will still be eating frozen yogurt in 2009!). Another special aspect of Berry Chill is that they offer all types of toppings, especially lots of cookie options:
I noticed there were three different types of Girl Scout cookies (thin mints on your frozen yogurt?!), pie crumbs, and lots of different types of cereals. They had a lot of dry options as well as fruit toppings (although their mangoes weren’t ripe so I couldn’t order it as a topping). They had a typical assortment of fruit and their special fruits were papaya and starfruit (although I didn’t see any the day I went).
I ordered frozen yogurt with blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries:
The yogurt was thick and creamy and pretty delicious. I was not a fan of their cups (my fruit kept falling out of the shallow dish). Also, their strawberries tasted like they had gone bad already (or as if they had fermented).
John ordered frozen yogurt with strawberries, blackberries, and chocolate chips:
John actually liked the taste of the fermented strawberries (he said it reminded him of strawberries frozen in syrup). John definitely enjoyed the yogurt and said he would be back, even though he read that frozen yogurt isn’t good for you (who needs to be healthy all the time, right?!)
Berry Chill’s owner talked with me for a bit after we finished our frozen yogurt and said that business has been good – lots of repeat customers and familiar faces already. They’re very high tech – you can buy a frequent buyers card that keeps your past 6 orders so you can just swipe at the self-checkout and pick which yogurt you want (you can also put money on the card). If you buy the frequent buyers card, every purchase gives 3% to a charity of your choice. Pretty forward thinking, right?
The owner headed to New York today to check out the yogurt scene – he should definitely check out Flurt to taste his competition!
The other day I went to Yoberri in Lincoln Park with Josh, Jonathan, and Jen. Earlier in the afternoon, I went to Berry Chill for some frozen yogurt so I wanted to try the other places in Chicago (frozen yogurt is just entering the Chicago market). Yoberri was opened a couple weeks ago by a 21-year-old girl that tried a similar frozen yogurt in Italy and decided to recreate it in the states (the owner of Berry Chill had a similar story). Business hasn’t really picked up yet (the weather is still kind of cold and the location is a little out of the way for people).
Josh and I ordered a medium with blueberries, mangoes, and raspberries:
All of the fruit is fresh, although half of the raspberries are blended in a mixer and then added back with the fruit (a good idea, but it was incredibly sour when I actually tasted it). The mangoes were overripe and the raspberry sauce was a little sour, but the blueberries were very good.
Size of the hole:
UNacceptable! Josh actually pointed out the hole size (he followed the fro-yolympics, obviously). Yeah, the hole WAS incredibly large, but they had a scale behind the cash register (a scale that they DID NOT use). Jonathan and Jen ordered a medium with papaya, mochi, and strawberries and weren’t impressed with the taste or the iciness of the frozen yogurt.
I was messing around with my camera (actually, it’s my friend David’s camera), and I took a little video review (it was actually really easy and fun to do!). I don’t have any video-editing software (I don’t have a mac – boo!), but no one said anything I had to edit, so I just uploaded it online – I hope you enjoy it! If you have any tips on how to edit videos, drop me an email – gracenotesnyc@gmail.com.
Would I go back to Yoberri? No – even though it’s a cute store and I would love to support local businesses, the frozen yogurt was just not very good.
In preparation for this June’s fro-yolympics, I’ve been checking out some of the new frozen yogurt spots that have recently popped up in Manhattan. I was really excited to hear about Yogurtland’s opening – a transplant from LA, they offer Pinkberry-style plain frozen yogurt, but they are completely self-serve and have a large variety of flavors and toppings (I counted 16 different flavors the day I went). I asked for a sample container (they only have large and super-large containers to put frozen yogurt in), and I sampled all 16 flavors 馃檪 Here are the frozen yogurt dispensers:
The flavors in rotation on the day we went were the following: Vanilla (pretty good), chocolate (pretty good), cookies and cream (awesome), New York cheesecake (okay), cappuccino (awesome), plain tart (very icy and sweet), peach (very artificial), peach tart (very artificial), mango (not bad), mango tart (not bad), green apple tart (extremely artificial), taro (chalky), strawberry (very artificial), strawberry tart (very artificial), blueberry tart (very artificial), and green tea (not bad).
Yogurtland also had a lot more toppings than any frozen yogurt store I’ve ever visited:
Some of the toppings include: pomegranate seeds, gummi bears, mangoes, blueberries, cookie dough, NY cheesecake chunks, and granola.
Dispensing the frozen yogurt was harder than I thought (so credit to the fro-yo experts that work at Pinkberry, Red Mango, Flurt, etc), but I also think the Yogurtland mixture was a lot icier than other frozen yogurt shops. We ended up getting half mango frozen yogurt and half plain (tart) frozen yogurt with blueberries and mangoes:
Most of the flavors tasted a little artificial (I spoke with an employee and he said that everything is sent over in large milk cartons that are poured into the machines – it’s similar to the way Red Mango and Pinkberry make their frozen yogurt). The price of the frozen yogurt is only $0.39 cents/ounce, which is really cheap (if you remember from the Fro-Yolympics, most of the frozen yogurt shops charged around $0.60 cents/ounce).
I think Yogurtland will do really well – not only are they competing with plain frozen yogurt shops (Pinkberry, Red Mango, and Yolato are all within walking distance), they’re also in the same playing court as Tasti-d-Lite and Frogurt (the brand of yogurt served at Bloomingdales, Zabars, Cafe Lalo, and Lord and Taylor). I didn’t see any health information nearby, but an employee told me that they just signed a contract with Danon to
Tip: Definitely ask for a sample container because their flavors don’t taste the same as the stuff you get at other yogurt shops in the city!
Here are the NEW details for the Yorganic opening:
Also, if you wanted to know what kind of toppings they have, they sent me an email with the details:
Looks like they’re going to have lots of fresh fruit AND dried fruit! I’m going to be out of town for the grand opening on the 22nd, but maybe they’ll hook me up on the 27th! 馃檪 If you end up going, let me know how it tastes!
With so many frozen yogurt shops opening up, the next Fro-Yolympics is going to be crazy!
