Culture, An American Yogurt Company, NYC

If you have read my blog, or know me at all, you know how much I enjoy ice cream/frozen yogurt/gelato/etc.  I have a scoop of some kind of frozen treat with nearly every dessert after dinner (warm pie a la mode, fruit crisps/crumbles/tarts always "need" a scoop, even a heated up leftover donut requires ice cream in my world ...).  Most week days I have the soft serve at my office after lunch, and weekend lunches *always* conclude with a warm chocolate cake or cookie with ice cream on top.  So ice cream (and its close relatives) are just part of my everyday baseline.  

But when you put me in warm, sunny weather, I turn a bit crazy about frozen desserts.  About soft serve in particular.  I don't just want my afternoon frozen treat as a component in a larger creation, I need it to be THE starring role.  And it needs to be soft serve (hard serve is for eating at home!).  It needs to be consumed outside, in the afternoon sun.  Rainy days need not apply.  If it is ice cream, or frozen yogurt, from a shop that doesn't specialize in toppings, then it needs to be in a cone (cake cone, not sugar, ideally cone shaped but the flat bottom will do), with sprinkles or dip.  If the temperature is over 85*, dip is not considered.  If it is a shop known for toppings, which is generally more true for froyo than ice cream, then, a dish with ALL the toppings is in order.

Now that you have this context, let me further explain that I got to live in New York for the month of August this year.  Let's just say, I certainly made the most of my soft serve "needs".  I dragged coworkers nearly immediately to Soft Swerve, my favorite soft serve ice cream in the city.  I took advantage of birthday freebie scoops to get generic hard serve at Baskin-Robbins and Haagen-datz, and birthday froyo at Pinkberry and 16 Handles.  I indulged in the office soft serve ice cream every single day.  I finally ventured to Mister Dips to get an epic soft serve creation there (review coming soon!).  On so on.

My last week in town, my co-workers wanted to get me cake to celebrate.  Now, NY has excellent cake, don't get me wrong, and I had plenty of it too when I was there (namely, Empire Cake, several times a week, without fail!), but I wanted more of an adventure.  It was going to be 90*+, and, well, I certainly could not stay indoors eating cake.  I had to go get creamy soft serve.

My destination, and thus theirs, was Culture, An American Yogurt Company.

"Here at Culture An American Yogurt Company our goal is to provide a healthy snack alternative to those who crave quality strained yogurt combined with artisanal toppings. We manufacture fresh and frozen yogurt in house. Our yogurt is made from specially selected live probiotic cultures and the freshest local milk, nothing more. Manufacturing all yogurts on premises ensures quality health-conscious treats that are extremely fresh."

I was drawn to it because it sounded like no other froyo around.  The froyo (and their own regular yogurt too) are made fresh every morning.  They use local dairy.  Flavors rotate daily, and are generally quite fascinating.  Toppings are not your run-of-the-mill generic shop options, rather many are housemade, and they are well curated.

Menu Board.

Culture offers both regular (as in, non-frozen) Greek yogurt, and of course, the reason we were there, froyo.

This location has 6 flavors, which change daily.  On the day we visited, the flavors were:

• Original
• Nutella 
• Lychee 
• Pear Ginger 
• Unsweetened Raspberry
• Organic Cherry Vanilla

They seem to always have one organic, one unsweet, and one chocolate-adjacent, along with two others, and the always-available original flavor.  Prices for basic cup/cone are $5 kid's, $6 small, $7 medium $7, and $8.50 large(-$1 for non-frozen yogurt, +$1 for organic flavor).  

From there, of course, are the toppings.  The lineup of toppings features fresh fruits, sprinkles, sauces, nuts, seeds, granola, and then the less healthy options like white chocolate shavings, chocolate chip cookie bits, and mochi.  No real candy toppings.  Basic toppings are $1 each, or you can opt for a specialty curated topping creation for $2 each, which includes an option key lime pie (lime custard, crumble, lime syrup) or the classic sundae (cookie cup(!), sauce, whipped cream, cherry on top), along with higher end toppings like their version of wet walnuts (featuring maple syrup instead) or sophisticated balsamic strawberries.

Our group exclusively got frozen yogurt, in a variety of flavors and topping combinations.

I sampled all but the unsweet raspberry flavor, and the one person who tried that puckered up immediately and exclaimed over how very unsweet it was.

Lychee:  This was my favorite of the flavors I tried.  It was not nearly as sweet as I expected, and the lychee flavor was fairly subtle.  Just a lightly sweet, tangy, yogurt.  If I had wanted just fruit toppings, or fruit/granola, or mochi, I would have opted for this flavor.  Another member of my group really liked it.  ***+.

Pear Ginger:  This was by far the most flavorful of the flavors.  We nearly all agreed that it was *too* flavorful.  The ginger was insane.  That said, one co-worker did get it.  **.

Organic Cherry Vanilla:  I expected more from this.  It was lightly fruity, lightly sweet, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you it was cherry, and I didn't taste anything particularly vanilla either.  I wanted it to be creamier, and just more ... something.  It was a touch too boring.  ***.

Nutella: I'm not a huge Nutella fan, but, I wanted to try this as it regularly gets raves.  It was good, sweet, sorta chocolately.  A touch grainy and not as smooth as the others.  I would have been happy enough with this flavor if I had wanted something more chocolately.  ***+.

Overall, I found the flavors (besides the pear ginger) to be a bit muted, but, the quality yogurt was quite clear.  This is frozen yogurt for those who actually like yogurt, and not just flavor syrups).

Small Original Tart ($6) Vermont Maple Specialty Sundae ($2)
w/ Strawberry & White Chocolate Shavings (+$1 extra).

In the end, I went with the simple, classic, "original" flavor, which is a lightly sweet tart flavor, much like Pinkberry's standard original flavor, or Anita Gelato's froyo, just, a bit stronger in the actual yogurt taste.  You can tell you are eating a relatively healthy, actual yogurt base here.  Not a super rich, creamy froyo - you wouldn't accidentally think it was ice cream, but, a refreshing, tart, not too sweet, quality yogurt.  ***+.

I opted for the original flavor because I was really curious about the special "Vermont Maple sundae".  You see, I really do quite like wet walnuts, and this is their play on wet walnuts, just, more sophisticated, using maple syrup, yes, real syrup, rather than standard cloying corn syrup goo.  The Vermont Maple sundae comes with your choice of fruit (banana, strawberry, blueberry), and I opted for strawberry, but also added white chocolate shavings, as I kinda adore white chocolate, and was excited to see them offered, not just little chips.

The toppings were quite generously piled on, and for $1 per topping, this really did feel like a reasonable price.  The berries were fresh and chopped into perfect size pieces, the walnuts had a lovely maple flavor (and syrup to them that coated the froyo), and, I loved the standard sweet white chocolate shavings.  With all my sweet toppings, it certainly didn't eat like a healthy, tart yogurt, but that was fine with me.

Overall, enjoyable, quality product, but I didn't find myself super excited to return.  ***+.