San Marino Gets Its First Froyo Shop, Swirlz Soft Serve Parlor is Now Open

Fro-yo girl here. This is embarrassing; a froyo shop opened in my area and I didn’t know about it until a month later. Swirlz Soft Serve Parlor (2136 Huntington Dr., San Marino, CA 91108) replaced Quenelle, the ice cream shop that sometimes had froyo flavors. Swirlz is described as “a frozen dessert parlor featuring organic and vegan options + various custards, gelato, and sorbets.”

They change flavors on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the flavors can be found on their website and on Twitter, @swirlzsoftserve. The flavors that I encountered during my visit were different from the ones posted on their website on 4/18 and on Twitter. I guess the flavors hadn’t been updated. It’s a little frustrating to not find updated flavors because it should be easy to send a tweet.

The shop is small with few signs. There are eight self-serve flavors a day, a wall of toppings, refrigerated toppings and organic sauces. Some of the toppings were organic. They had mochi, cheesecake, popping boba, jellies, fresh fruit, cookie dough, brownies, nuts, cereal, sprinkles, different kinds of chocolate chips, candy, nuts, etc. A few toppings were unusual: soybeans, quinoa, and sunflower seeds. I didn’t see the price anywhere and I didn’t receive a receipt, but apparently it’s 59 cents an ounce. They also have pre-packed quarts.

Available flavors:

• Lemon custard: Creamier and thicker but tasted like lemon candy
• Raspberry gelato
• Vanilla ice cream (organic)
• Chocolate froyo (organic)
• Coffee froyo (organic): On the icy side but it did have a strong coffee flavor and wasn’t super sweet
• Tart froyo (organic): Not tart/tangy and pretty bland, icy
• Tropical coconut milk
• Dole whip pineapple

There was only one table inside but there were a couple of tables outside. They had a case for soft pretzels but no soft pretzels.

Ask to join the reward program. Once you spend $50, you get $5 off.

The new shop has more options for people with dietary restrictions. They always have vegan soft serve. So far the flavors they’ve had haven’t caught my eye and the tart froyo needs improvement.

San Marino is such a small area (2014 population of 13,423, over half of residents are Asian) with only a few businesses that it didn’t even strike me as strange that it didn’t have a froyo shop. There are plenty of froyo shops in the surrounding areas of South Pasadena, Pasadena, Alhambra and San Gabriel.

3 out of 5 stars.

You know you love me. X0 X0, fro-yo girl.

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