Canadas First Pinkberry!

Pinkberry

860 Main Street, West Vancouver

Park Royal Village

It’s here: Canada’s first Pinkberry! I missed the much hyped about Grand Opening featuring Cory Monteith’s band Bonnie Dune on Thursday. But when we showed up on Saturday afternoon, the lineup for frozen yogurt hadn’t ceased. Yeah, this is just frozen yogurt but thanks to The Hills and Gossip Girl, and now Glee‘s Cory Monteith, Pinkberry is now considered glamorous and is a fave snack amongst the Twitter-happy tween crowd.

Frozen yogurt is a great alternative to ice cream or gelato on a hot summer day though. And since yogurt generally is not that sweet, the frozen treat does not overpower any toppings from fruit to candy. The possibilities are endless. Another plus for the me-generation: options and customization!

While we stood in line, one of the servers handed out a tray of free yogurt samples. Who doesn’t love free samples? Especially when standing in a long line in the sun for frozen yogurt. Yes, the line was so long, we looped out the door and onto the sidewalk. The frozen yogurt sample was pomegranate flavour and it was just like as advertised on the menu board: bold and intense, for yogurt anyway. There was the definite tart aftertaste of the yogurt but the fruity sweetness of the pomegranate flavours came through too.

Finally when we got to the front of the line, a server behind the glass counter took our order. Servers behind the counter pump the yogurt and scoop toppings for customers. It’s not like at Qoola where it’s more of a buffet for customers to serve themselves. Pinkberry is more like Subway but with yogurt.

There are five flavours of yogurt: original, watermelon, chocolate, coconut, pomegrante and mango. We ordered an original yogurt and a mango. Since we weren’t that hungry, we opted for mini sized cups but the yogurts turned out to be so light that we totally could’ve indulged in larger sizes.

On the original, we opted for one of the ‘luxe’ toppings called peanut butter crunch. This was priced at an extra 50 cents even though I’m pretty sure the topping only consisted of peanut butter mixed with Rice Krispies but I’m a sucker for peanut butter and chocolate so we also chose a generous sprinkling of chocolate chips.

There are pros and cons to picking plain yogurt. One of the cons is that the natural tart yogurt flavour is much stronger in plain yogurt but unhampered by other fruit flavourings, one of the pros is that plain yogurt is the perfect canvas for sweet toppings like peanut butter and chocolate.

The peanut butter crunch topping perched on the edge of the cup of yogurt in a sticky glob and was pretty hard to mix in with the rest of the yogurt and chocolate chips. But it was tasty though! There’s nothing like the sweet, salty and crunchy mix of peanut butter with the rich sweetness of chocolate. The sticky peanut butter and the sweet crunch of the mini chocolate chips added an extra texture to the yogurt; altogether, this was definitely an indulgent snack, since the yogurt is low in calories (they list the number of calories right on the menu board), I had to make up those calories somehow!

We went healthier with the mango yogurt just opting for ruby red raspberries and a big round pizzelle cookie. The pizzelle cookie reminded me of the maple bacon ice cream sandwiches at Meat and Bread. These cookies rarely get soggy and their subtle vanilla flavour was a great compliment to the sweet mango yogurt. For the health conscious customers, it’s handy that Pinkberry lists the health benefits of the fruit toppings right on the topping labels. The raspberries that we chose were high in fiber and vitamin C.

The mango yogurt at Pinkberry actually tastes like a perfectly ripe mango, I guess they don’t lie when they advertise that they only use real fruit in their yogurts. It’s written on the wall in the store. I had a lot of time to read the walls and the entire menu board as we stood in line.

The mango yogurt was the stark contrast to our peanut butter crunch topped plain yogurt, not just because it was mainly fruit. In our plain yogurt, the toppings were sugary sweet and the yogurt offered subtle tart flavours. But in the mango yogurt, the raspberries were incredibly ripe but more on the tart side when mixed in with the very sweet and tropical flavours of the mango yogurt. I especially loved it when some of the mango yogurt got trapped inside the raspberries making the raspberry a mini cup filled with smooth and sweet yogurt. The mango yogurt stole the show but it was vice versa with the plain yogurt where the toppings were front and centre in flavour.

I can’t wait to go back to try the other Pinkberry flavours and toppings!