Make your own froyo finally catching on!

I was only gone for 4 months, but somehow a million new froyo places have popped up everywhere!
I knew that 16 Handles was planning on opening up a ton of new locations, including the Upper West Side, West Village, and even one in Brooklyn in the Midwood area!  I'm happy to say that they wisened up and added the toppings they brought to the Upper East Side location, down to the East Village.  These are coming soon, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, I stumbled across four new make-your-own places in the last month.  Let's give you the run-down, followed by a quick list of the existing places we already knew about.

First we have Flavaboom, on 6th Ave between 17th & 18th street.  They have fewer flavors than 16 Handles, but some different toppings. They had mint chocolate chips, and caramel drops.  They also had a ton of baked goods, such as cookies and brownies, and vegan cupcakes in interesting flavors like bubble gum!

There's a new location of Roast Town Coffee on W 34th street between 7th and 8th Avenue.  This used to be my go-to because the original location is on 6th Avenue in the high 20s (I think 27th street), and it was the only make-your-own froyo place in midtown.  The yogurt isn't anything special and the toppings are standard, but it's convenient enough.  There's also a location in the East Village near St Mark's, but the one on 34th street had barely any flavors and even fewer toppings. I was majorly disappointed.

Outside the city, these places are catching on too!  When driving through Staten Island, I spotted Orange Leaf frozen yogurt. Since I was in my least favorite borough, I decided to make a pit stop and check it out to try to give SI some credit. They had only been open a month and were out of original flavor, losing many points in my book. But if you're going to be stuck out on SI, at least you have somewhere good to go for dessert now!  Oddly enough, Orange Leaf is a chain with 98 stores across the US, but the only NY location is in Staten Island. Arkansas, Minnesota, Indiana and Kansas seemed to have a lot of locations, which made me realize that the fro-yo trend isn't concentrated to New York and California. On a trip to Chicago in 2008, I was apalled that the only ice cream-type treat available was a Dairy Queen 30 minutes outside the city center.  Orange Leaf has a location in Illinois, but not Chicago. Very surprising. Isn't Chicago supposed to be a major city?  For all you Staten Islanders, Orange Leaf is located at 65 Page Avenue. Enjoy!


Last, there was a Tutti Frutti in Long Beach, right across the street from the LIRR en route to the beach. I suppose this information is useless, with it being September and summer being over, but unfortunately Labor Day was my first beach trip all summer, and the discovery came quite late in the season. I have to credit Alana Leviton for not only teaching me about this place, but convincing me it was so good that it was worth the trip out to Long Beach. I have to agree, Tutti Frutti had some of the best yogurt I've tried. Their Dulce Leche flavor was amazing and reminded me of Argentina (that's a good thing), although a little on the sweet side and would have been hard to load up on Kit Kat and Twix toppings - too much sugar!  The Cake Batter and Coconut flavors were delicious too. They had a wider variety of toppings than even 16 Handles, include toasted coconut, Ghiradelli chocolate syrup, and candied walnuts.  Next summer, make sure to stop in here before getting on your train back to Manhattan!

Now for the round-up, since people are always asking me where the nearest froyo spots are. I will provide only the make-your-owns, because there are too many Pinkberry/Tasti Delites for even me to know about!

Financial District:
Red Mango self-serve, 111 Fulton Street

East Village:
16 Handles, 2nd Avenue @ E 10th Street
Roast Town Coffee, St Parks & 3rd Ave
There's a 3rd place on St. Marks on the block between 3rd & Astor, I forget the name but it's not nearly as good as 16 Handles and worth walking up the block.

West Village:
Phileo Yogurt, 267 Bleecker Street between 5th & 6th Ave

Chelsea:
Flavaboom, 6th Avenue & 17th Street

Midtown:
Roast Town Coffee, 6th Avenue and W 27th Street
Roast Town Coffee, W 34th Street between 7th & 8th Avenue

Red Mango, W 32nd Street between 5th & 6th Avenues

Upper East Side:
16 Handles, 2nd Ave & E 82nd Street

Upper West Side:
16 Handles, Amsterdam Avenue & W 76th Street

If I am missing any, please let me know so I can keep up to date! I am sure new things have opened while I was away that are necessary to try.

Put your Spoons in the air - and welcome my new Wickedly favorite froyo shop!

 Wow. Where do I begin?!  I had read about the new frozen yogurt place that opened in Park Slope, Wicked Spoon, about a month ago, and added it to the list of places to try.  Frozen yogurt is my favorite dessert ever, and I'm always excited to try a new place, especially in my favorite neighborhood.  I tried not to read too much about it, because I wanted to form my own opinion when I visited.  I mentioned this new place to a few friends, including the fact that chocolate covered crickets were for sale, and we decided to head out to Brooklyn today to investigate.

Wicked Spoon's concept is that they have wickedly delicious flavors and combinations, unique from anything you'll find at your run of the mill Red Mango or Pinkberry chain.  The owner, Alex Rozhitsky, wanted to bring creative culinary combinations to the yogurt-loving world, and he has more than succeeded.  He has created a place that actually makes me wish I had never moved from Park Slope! Although probably better for my pocket, because if I lived closer I would be coming here every day.  Although I'll probably still try to come here every day, it's only 2 stops from Atlantic Avenue.

So let's get into the details.  There are 4 flavors on the froyo tap.  Tart, chocolate, and pomegranate are the staples.  The 4th is the flavor of the month, which luckily for me was cookies and cream.  The yogurt itself comes from Oregon, and is all natural, nonfat, gluten free and kosher.  So it's good for everyone.  Unlike most froyo joints, the consistency of the yogurt is smooth through and through.  It didn't melt fast in the cup, or lose it's sturdiness as we ate.  The tart was just the right balance of tart and tangy, and the chocolate was rich but not overly sweet.  I even liked the perfectly fruity pomegranate, even though I'm solely a chocolate girl.

The difficult part was choosing the toppings.  There were over 40 to choose from, which meant over 10 minutes at the counter deciding what the best flavor combinations would be.  Alex was super nice and let us taste a few of the toppings, which most places don't ever offer.  Alex partners with local NY food entrepreneurs to offer toppings such as Jacques Torres' chocolate covered cheerios and ginger, bobbysue's nuts! (plain or chocolate covered), and WannaHavaCookie, who provides the cookies for the froyo-filled whoopie pies.  Traditional toppings were available as well (an assortment of fruits, cereals, sprinkles, chocolate chips, etc) but an additional array of unique toppings such as Tate's chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered rice krispies, wasabi peas, nonpareils, yogurt craisins, chocolate malt balls, and chocolate graham crackers.  There were also sauces to consider, from your chocolate and caramel to cabernet berry, lemoncello sauce and balsamic.  It was nearly impossible to decide - note Melissa's pensive face analyzing the toppings:

I decided on a mixture of tart and cookies and cream, which were served one on top of another since they're in different machines.  The bowls come with up to 3 toppings, and I chose Tate's chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered rice krispies and Jacques Torres chocolate covered cheerios.  Melissa's and my concoctions were fairly similar, and Jake went with one of the pre-set 'Wicked Combinations', Yellow Snow, which consisted of original tart yogurt, pineapple, mango, and lemoncello sauce.  They were presented beautifully, and we all thoroughly enjoyed the yogurt and toppings alike.  We also purchased 2 chocolate covered crickets for - I suppose dessert?  As we sat at the table and discussed how much we loved Wicked Spoon, we discovered that Alex had cards for people to fill in their own flavor combinations.  We spent the next hour on our rainy Sunday afternoon developing amazing combinations which I won't reveal too much of, but included the "Double Feature", "The Anti-Oxidizer", and the "Naughty & Nice."

While we brainstormed, Alex talked to us and told us about his venture, showed us the prototypes for the biodegradable spoons, which they had out of due to the popularity since opening.  He told us he was in the works for opening up 2 additional locations, and explained the affiliation with some of the toppings providers like bobbisue's nuts! (and gave us a jar to try, and they were some damn good nuts!) He also gave us one of his favorite combinations to try, the Wicked Sonoma, which was pomegranate yogurt with blueberries, blackberries and cabernet sauce.  As we tried to figure out some great international toppings that could be included in the "Around the World" sundae (still working on it, if you have suggestions please let me know!), Alex also let us try the whoopie pies, which I ALSO loved - EVERYTHING was great here!  The whoopie pie cakes were made with WannaHavaCookie cookies, and the red velvet cookie was paired with pomegranate froyo and the chocolate went with the cookies and cream.  I'm not even a fan of whoopie pies, AND was stuffed, but still managed to have some!!

In the end, when I thought I couldn't ingest anything else, we had to try our chocolate covered crickets.  Now, I've never eaten a bug before (knowingly at least) - but felt like walking in NY in flip flops is probably more disgusting than eating a bug covered in chocolate. Plus, Jake and I had talked about it all week (thinking we were going to be eating grasshoppers actually but - we were close), and we were there, so it had to be done.  We unwrapped our crickets, which had nutritional facts on the package - only 30 calories per bug and 2g of fat. No protein.  After a little toast made by Jake, we fed each other our crickets.  It didn't taste much different than a chocolate covered rice krispie.  I did hear the crunch as I bit, which was the only gross part until Jake later noticed that one of the cricket legs hadn't quite made it all the way down :)  We proudly put on our 'I Ate A Bug Club' pins, shook hands with our new friend Alex, and went back home to share the news with the world.  Alex is working on a lot of new fun combinations, and I know I'll be back here frequently to try them all!

 Wicked Spoon is located at 321 5th Avenue, 1 block from the R stop on 4th Ave and 9th street, or 2 blocks from the F/G train at 7th Avenue.  Go. Trust me.  And when you're going, tell me so I can come along!


http://wickedspoonyogurt.com/index.html