Gotham Digest

My ideal cup of frozen yogurt is a take on Fage Yogurt but in soft-serve form. I’m open to flavors but it has to be tart or else it’s just soft-serve ice cream.

I began my journey to find the best frozen yogurt at 40 Carrots in Bloomingdales. After waiting in a lengthy line for take-out, I got myself a small cup with all of their flavors of the day: plain, chocolate, coffee, and strawberry-banana. The plain was very creamy and pleasantly tart. The chocolate was tasty and creamy but the flavor masked the tartness, if any at all, which was also the case with the coffee and strawberry-banana flavors.

Moving onto Pinkberry, the pioneer of the fro-yo craze in NYC. What do I think of their yogurt? It’s overrated – the tart factor is a bit too bracing for my liking and too icy. As for the other flavors, the green tea was tepid and the tart factor was toned down. The coffee flavor was weak and the iciness was too pervasive. I would consider Pinkberry the Starbucks of fro-yo – hyped, expensive, yet the pioneer of their genre.

Crazy Bananas serves plain yogurt and other flavors that rotate throughout the week. I came in the day they were serving green tea flavor. The plain was fine, perhaps a touch too icy. The green tea was pleasantly grassy with a trace of acidic yogurt. The toppings were good but I think the raspberries were frozen then thawed a bit.

I had high hopes for Flurt since I had heard great things. They only serve plain, which is a very good thing since it’s the best I’ve tasted – tart flavor that lingers for a while with a minute amount of bitter undertones that Fage yogurt has, and it’s creamy, and smooth. Their fruit toppings were generally good but the mango was a bit unripe and left a raw, bitter aftertaste. In spite of this, Flurt is the promise land of fro-yo.

Red Mango was the last place to cap off this expedition. I had the plain yogurt with mochi, pomegranate seeds, and banana. Their yogurt is good in terms of smoothness and tartness. The topping offerings were unique compared to other yogurt shops in the city – I do like their chewy mochi a lot.

So, here’s my top 5 list for the best frozen yogurt:

Other up-and-coming fro-yo places in NYC: