Spoon Me

I went out for dinner Friday night with the boy, Jen, and her hubby, Matt. We dined at Cafe Rio (yum) then decided to head next door to check out Spoon Me. It's been open for a few months now and I assumed it was an ice cream shop. Wrong! It's a frozen yogurt emporium but not your run-of-the-mill fro yo. It's modeled after the phenomenally successful chain Pinkberry in Southern California. Apparently it's so popular, it was written up in the LA Times as the "taste that launched 1,000 parking tickets."

The basic concept: the store serves frozen yogurt in two flavors - natural and green tea. After you pick a flavor, you can choose three toppings. The topping choices were mind-boggling; I finally settled on strawberries, kiwis and dark chocolate chips. All fruits are cut fresh in store (and they do mean fresh). Other choices included chopped nuts and cereals, including one that looks suspiciously like Fruity Pebbles.

If you're thinking about the super sweet frozen yogurt available at TCBY or in the Smith's frozen aisle, think again. Spoon Me's yogurt is very tart, almost like plain yogurt from a tub. The best part? There's only 22 calories per ounce (not counting my chocolaty toppings, of course)!

Okay, I lied. The best part about Spoon Me is its environmental footprint. All serving containers and utensils are biodegradable. Even the garbage bags are biodegradable! The employees all wear clothing made from bamboo fibers and bamboo wood is on the floor as well. The D-News wrote a nice article when the shop first opened; you can find it here.