Adam & Eats: Yolo Frozen Yogurt

Editor’s note: Adam Brandt is a graduate from the Cobra Kai School of Culinary Callousness, where he received their highest award, the Red Apron of Merciless Eating. Aside from eating and talking about eating, he makes pots, paintings, prints, books, photographs, and generally, a big mess. He has been the studio assistant at Mudpuppy Pottery for 10 years and is attending a local university in a desperate attempt to earn a biology degree.

This week we venture back into the land of sweet things. We head off to a newly opened branch of a chain that focuses on supporting local business. What we find is something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately; when a restaurant opens under the pretenses of helping the community, they tend to serve food that isn’t so great.

My thinking is that if a restaurant focuses on serving good food, the community will get good things gastronomically, spiritually, and economically. Crap, I’m ranting already. Looks like this is going to be a rough one.

Located next to the Malco theater in the Central Mall plaza, is the new home of Yolo Frozen Yogurt. Brightly lit, colorfully decorated, ideally located for a pre- or post-movie treat, Yolo seems on the surface to be on the right track. What we find once we delve a little deeper is that they are a company with an agenda. Granted, their agenda is one of good rather than malice, but it is an agenda nonetheless.

They are a company that strives to support local businesses by buying their supplies in the near vicinity. Local acquisition of their secret ingredients and their plethora of toppings sounds awesome. Guess what, it is awesome. I cannot fault them for trying to help out local businesses. What I can fault them with is the end result, the part that lands on the table, being mediocre. Sure the idea of eating locally produced and in season foods is a great one, but what exactly is the ideal season for harvesting Trix cereal? I think the idea is to eat local and seasonal produce, not commercially made toppings brought to you by local vendors for national chains.

Also, the idea of marketing a “healthy treat” that you can then top with the incredibly delicious and nutritionally devoid crumbled up Reese’s peanut butter cup just seems backhanded to me. Care for a healthy and delicious dessert option? Care to have some snake oil drizzled over it for a nominal fee?

I let Goody’s get away with it because they were the only ones doing it (and it was at least yummy), but no more. If you want to treat yourself to something sweet and yummy by all means do so. Just don’t call it something that it’s not. Sticking feathers up your butt doesn’t make you a chicken. Neither does drowning a potentially low-fat low-calorie dessert with corn syrupy,  artificially flavored, yellow cake #6 colored toppings, make something healthy. That’s all I’m saying. Just call it what it is.

Whew! That was a little meaner than I really wanted to come out.

Enough ranting, let’s talk about the frozen and churned product of a bacterial process. There are things that I’ve eaten that are frightening facsimiles of other things (Larry’s cheeseburger pizza, for example) but Yolo’s birthday cake flavored yogurt is terrifyingly good if you like butter cream iced birthday cake.

Also, the coconut yogurt is wonderful, but it leaves you tempted to take a few seconds to cover it with chocolate syrup and almonds, thus an Almond Joy is born. Both of these are great, but overall the selection left me wanting more and better stuff.

I didn’t want this to be a negative piece. I really do want local businesses to flourish. Sometimes though, I’ve just got to call it how I see it. If you are in the mood for something sweet feel free to give Yolo a try. It’s really not bad.

Just do me a favor, don’t pretend you are going there to have a healthy snack in order to help out local business. If you want to eat a healthy snack and help out local business, feel free to visit our local farmer’s market and grab some locally grown fruit.

Until next week, good eating to you and yours.

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When he’s not beating his eggs, Adam makes time to respond to e-mails that get past his hard-ass spam filter. You can try to reach him at [email protected]

Adam also has this thing called Sandwich Control.