More in LA - Pinkberry and K-Town

Have y'all heard of this Pinkberry? It's all the rage in LA and NYC. They keep yammering about all the celebrities and how they're all going to Pinkberry and the paparrazi snap pics of all them scarfing down this stuff, which they've dubbed crackberry. It's spawned dozens of copycats, even though Pinkberry itself was a copy of South Korea's Red Mango. And since I was in LA, I had to try this crack myself.



The place is decorated all mod and space age. Clean and white with ice cream related bowls and utencils for sale. All which no sane person would ever buy. The concept of Pinkberry is simple - frozen yogurt with toppings of your choice. There are only two kinds of yogurt - original and green tea. There are three sizes. You can get as many toppings as you like for 95 cents, but the best deal is for the medium, as you get three toppings for about $5. That tends to be what everybody gets.

So it is frozen yogurt, but definitely not in the TCBY sense. It's literally frozen yogurt, as in yoplait, dannon, stonyfield farms. It's not like ice cream at all. But unlike plain yogurt, it's just made in a frozen yogurt/soft-serve ice cream machine so it has that soft serve ice cream texture, but even more incredibly smooth and rich. The toppings are either fresh fruit or sweets/cereals/nuts. I didn't like the idea of putting crunch berries or oreos on my frozen yogurt, so I went with the fruit. Heck, I always go with fruit. The fruit here is great. It's not frozen, it's not canned, it's not unripe. It's the sweetest and most fresh fruit you can imagine. I think that's one of the keys in why this place is so popular.

I went with kiwi, blackberries, and pomegranate, which is seasonal. And you know what? I really liked this. The yogurt itself is tart and tangy and it's a wonderful contrast to the ripe and sweet fruit. And it's just fresh and natural tasting. It's not overly sweet like ice cream would be. But did I become addicted? No, but I did enjoy it. But I see it as being a fad until the next big thing comes around. They do have Pinkberry in NYC. S joked that I should open a Pinkberry in Philly. I'm not sure how that would go. It's definitely seasonal, so competing with the existing ice cream, water ice, and gelato places around town could be hairy. But heck, if somebody else opens one up, then I'd happily patronize it every now and again during the summer time. But only if you can wrangle me away from Capogiro.

After my giant pinkberry, I wasn't really hungry, but S was. So she took me to Koreatown, as she'd been raving about these korean style spicy chicken wings for months. Koreatown is fairly sizable, but in a rather sketchy area of LA. You don't go Koreatown because it's an attractive neighborhood, you go there for the food. We went to OB Bear, which is an extremely casual and low key spot. We were there on a Tuesday night, but the place was packed. Who knew?

We ordered the spicy chicken wings, of course. And dear lord, these were spicy! They were meaty and sweet, sticky, and freakin spicy. Man. I know these aren't traditional hot wings, but these are spicy in a completely different way. Good, but hella spicy. I only ate two.

We also ordered dukpoki. Yes, it seems like I eat this alot. It was good, but heavy on the squash, and not heavy enough on the dukpoki. Come on people, I ordred dukpoki, and not squashpoki. The flavor was a bit different than the dukpoki I get home, not better, just different. I was wishing it would be as good as street vendors in Seoul, but no, it was just ok. Gosh, I wish I could go to Korea and get the dukpoki from the sketchy street cart that serves it to you in a plastic bag!

OB Bear

3002 W 7th St

Los Angeles, CA 90005

(213) 480-4910