Friday, April 13, 2012

Yotality

There's a scene in The Jerk in which Navin Johnson jumps for joy upon finding his name in the phonebook, shouting, "The new phonebook's here! The new phonebook's here!"  Substitute me for Navin and Yotality for the phonebook and you get the picture.

To explain why a fro-yo place triggers such joy, let me take you way back.  It's the mid 80s in Gainesville.  By day, my B-school study buddies and I lurk on the Plaza of the Americas, lunching on takeout from the original, old school Bageland and hole-in-the-wall Burrito Brothers while trying to make sense of our TI financial calculators.  By night, we swamp Library East, hogging tables on a permanent basis and take study breaks for a new taste sensation: frozen yogurt!  We'd run over to the first fro-yo place in Gainesville: Tropical Treats (which was next to Leo's) and then sneak it back into the Library.

Fast forward about a quarter of a century (OUCH!!! How did that happen?), and I'm now sitting in Shorty's with my husband and kids.  During a lull in the conversation, my eye is captured by a sign in Sanrio-style script across Dixie Hwy; it reads "Yogurtland."  "What could this be?" we all wonder, so we go exploring.  And, like Christopher Columbus, we find a new world full of taste sensations!

It turns out that throughout Miami, yogurt chains have multiplied like, well, yogurt cultures!  They are ALL pink and green, whether Yogurtland or Menchie's or Yuzu or any of the other dozen.  And, they're all delicious!  We somehow find a way to eat fro-yo each day while there and bid them a tearful goodbye when we head by to ROC.  Why, oh why, have we no Yogurtland?!  Isn't bad enough we're Chick-fil-A-less?!  That we have no Pollo Tropical providing all drive-thru customers with the delicious incentive necessary to build the skill set required to eat black beans and rice while driving 80MPH on I-95?!

And, then today, the sun shone upon Pittsford as Yotality opened its shiny white doors into its brightly colored interior: orange, green, blue, purple all aglow in the evening light streaming in the floor to ceiling windows overlooking picturesque Main Street.  Did I mention the spa-like slate stone wall?  The gorgeous wood floor?  The Sirius XM Coffee House soundtrack?  Yay!!!  My son and I went tonight, and it's all we could have hoped for and more!  The bank of yogurt machines with 2 flavors plus a cutely named swirl each :)  The Wegman's-worthy array of toppings:  a full cold bar and another for candies, chocolates, and fruity pebbles (!).

After taste testing his way through the machines, my son (hold the presses and your stomachs) chose chocolate topped with sour gummy worms, sweet gummy bears, Nerds, and Oreos.  (Ah, to be a decade less than a half century younger again!)  I chose the love of my fro-yo life, tart vanilla, and topped it with strawberries, raspberries and kiwi.  Together, we spent less than $4, ate oh-so-good for us (according to Yotality's wall sign) fro-yo, and sat in the window Pittsford-people watching on a spring-like Friday night.

Yotality, you had us at "yo"!

No comments:

Post a Comment