I’ve been addicted to yogurt for some time now and the thing with my addictions is that it’s not just an addiction like anyone else’s addictions. My addictions become obsessions. I want it ALL the time, like every day. I become obsessive and feel this need to know everything about it, to dissect it and travel all over looking for the perfect one. As a result, I tried every possible yogurt location that I knew about. It got to the point, I was eating yogurt not just every day but several times a day. My boyfriend and I would drive from city to city having yogurt taste offs.

My addiction with yogurt began almost two years ago. I remember the first time I had it. I had dinner with my friend, Tiffany in downtown and she suggested we get CeFiore (then called Fiore) in Little Tokyo. I really couldn’t understand her insistence of getting frozen yogurt at that time. This yogurt I’m referring to isn’t the kind that I’d grown up to know. What I knew as frozen yogurt was TCBY, which I love and Golden Spoon. This was more like plain unflavored yogurt from the grocery store dairy section. It was lightly sweet and tart and refreshing. It was at that time that I was changed. While I thought it was tasty at the time, I didn’t think it would be something that I would crave for.

It wasn’t for another few weeks before I experienced it again. I happened to work a few blocks down from Pinkberry and my coworker, HL who was is completely and unabashedly addicted to Pinkberry. He would go every single day. No, seriously, EVERY single day. So for several weeks, I would eat Pinkberry every single day. My favorite combo at Pinkberry is medium plain with 3 toppings: granola, strawberries, and mango.

HL is an avid Pinkberry groupie. He claims he’s tried all the other ones and likes Pinkberry the best. (I’m not sure if I believe he’s tried the other ones. I think he’s just to partial Pinkberry. So began my quest. I just had to know who had the best yogurt. I would try yogurt everywhere I could. Any place that sold yogurt, I’d buy some or at the very least, ask for a sample. I tasted yogurts all over LA from San Fernando valley, downtown to San Gabriel Valley and Westside; yogurt specialty stores, bakeries, boba shops, any place that had yogurt. To be honest, I still can’t explain my addiction. I really have no idea why I was addicted to it. All I know is I would crave it, all the time. There is a theory, not by me, that claims they put crack in it. I don’t know but A LOT of people I know have been addicted to yogurt.

So here is my rundown of yogurts

My favorite is Tous Le Jours in Rowland Heights. This is actually a bakery that began selling yogurt when the yogurt boom hit LA last year. Their yogurt is creamy yet tart. It’s much creamier than any other yogurt I’ve tasted. It’s also much thicker and not as icy. The caveat with this place is their topping selection sucks. While other yogurt specialty stores have fresh fruit that they cut throughout the day, most of their toppings are canned or not very fresh. But it makes no difference to me because I really don’t feel like this yogurt needs it. I actually prefer it naked.

Runner up in the yogurt taste off is CeFiore. HL claims I am partial to CeFiore because it was the first place I tried. I don’t really think that’s true. I think I like them because they taste better. =) CeFiore does have an ever so slight after taste. It’s not a bad after taste, it’s just an after taste. It’s less creamy than Tous Le Jour but has more substance than Pinkberry.

Lastly, I feel Pinkberry is overpriced and to me is the one I prefer least of my yogurt choices. It melts quickly and is very icy. This is not a yogurt you would want by itself. It needs the toppings for it’s substance. On the other hand, it is nice and light and instead of feeling full and bloated, you feel refreshed and kinda healthy.

I guess the trend here is that I tend to like creamier yogurts. Pinkberry is less creamy and needs more toppings while Tous Les Jour is good plain. I have also tried many other yogurt places that aren’t really worth mentioning. Though there is one last one that deserves mention which is YogurtLand. This place is great because it has like 30 different flavors and everything is self serve, including the toppings. They charge you per ounce. I’ve never had their sour flavored yogurt which I would guess would be the most similar to the other yogurt, which is why I didn’t include them in the review

So I think I may be completely cured of my yogurt addiction. A few weeks ago, my friend Christina told me she was going to take me to get “snow”. I said, shaved ice. And she said, no, snow. You’ll see. This is a conversation I’ll have many times with many people.

Snow is fabulous! Nothing that I could have ever imagine it being. When I first saw it, I thought it was layers of shaved white chocolate but in fact it’s super thin sheets of creamy goodiness. Just layers and layers all soft and pillowy, yet creamy and slightly sweet. It’s actually a block of frozen milk that’s shaven.

The good thing is this new addiction only has one source so it’s less likely to get out of hand but on the other it’ll be more difficult to satiate my cravings.

The restaurant is called Class 302 in Rowland Heights and is a small grade-school-themed taiwanese cafe. The tables look like little desks and the chopsticks and napkins hang in backpacks on the side of the desks. The chalkboard has “Today’s Activities” with the menu written in colored chalk and even the waiters dress like school children.

The food was decently priced and tasty and served in little lunch boxes. It’s simple and traditional Taiwanese food. But back to the snow… So far I’ve tried the snow with red beans & rice cakes, green tea snow with red beans and rice cakes, and snow with mangoes. My favorite combination is the rice cakes and red bean. The rice cakes are basically mochi. mmm… so chewy and sweet. It goes really well with the snow. The red beans are sweetened and there’s condensed milk poured all over everything. Drool…