Fro-yo girl here. Several new popsicle places have opened recently, including popbar’s new location at Westfield Santa Anita which opened this week and Enjoyer, a kiosk that opened at the Glendale Galleria last month. The two are similar – choose a popsicle (gelato pop, sorbet pop or yogurt pop) and choose dips and toppings. I don’t know who started this trend of dipped popsicles with toppings but popbar is the first place that I heard of with this concept.
It reminds me of frozen yogurt: choose your flavor, choose your toppings and sauces.
I like a nice popsicle – it’s small, portable and convenient. You’d think that it would be easy to make a good popsicle but for some reason this isn’t true. I’ve had some terrible icy, bland popsicles.
So popbar finally opened…I’d heard so much about it that I expected to be impressed. It’s a cute shop with giant popsicle sculptures. The gelato, sorbetto and yogurt is “artisanal” and all-natural. The pops are made fresh on site every day. The YogurtPop is $3.99, plus 50 cents for unlimited dippings and another 50 cents for unlimited poppings. They had four kinds of dip: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate and caramel. You can specify full dip, half dip or drizzle. The poppings are toppings and there aren’t many of them: almonds, pistachios, hazelnuts, waffle cones, chocolate sprinkles and coconut. For some reason I was expecting more toppings (spoiled by froyo?)
I tried the Strawberry YogurtPop with white chocolate, hazelnuts and pistachios. The pop was thin and soft. It tasted like sour strawberry sorbet. I couldn’t detect yogurt (maybe they gave me a strawberry sorbetto pop instead?). The white chocolate shell with nuts was tasty and thick but the pop itself was disappointing. For that price I’d much rather have a nice cup of froyo with better toppings and better flavor. They don't even have samples.
Enjoyer is a new popsicle kiosk that opened in the Glendale Galleria (lower level, center) last month. They have about 20 kinds of popsicles, mostly gelato/ice cream pops, but also a few sorbet and yogurt pops (strawberry yogurt, mango yogurt). You can get a plain/pure popsicle for $4 or one with toppings. The toppings include dried fruit, chocolate, nuts, etc. The popsicles already have toppings, so you can’t have them create one with your choice of toppings on the spot. This is disappointing.
The handcrafted popsicles are organic with lots of real fruit. They have samples of the popsicles. Flavors include green tea, pistachio, Nutella, dark chocolate, kiwi, pina colada, mango, coffee, etc. The popsicles are 3 ozs each (they’re more expensive than the typical cup of frozen yogurt).
The Strawberry yogurt pure popsicle ($4) was a good size popsicle. The texture is firm, creamy and dense. It tasted quite tart, more tart than tangy. It had bits of strawberry and seemed to have more juice than yogurt. Though I could taste the yogurt, the strawberry juice flavor was stronger. I’d like to have more yogurt flavor. However, it was a good popsicle.
Stick Station opened in Old Town Pasadena in 2014. They have scoopable gelato and handmade popsicles with toppings and drizzles. The popsicles are made out of gelato, sorbet or yogurt. They have more toppings and drizzles than popbar, including Oreos, almonds, pistachio, choco beads, pretzel crumbs, coconut, chocolate drizzle, caramel drizzle, white chocolate drizzle, etc.
Their Whole Yogurt w/ Blueberry Yogurt Popsicle ($4.20) is basically a sweetened plain yogurt pop with a few whole blueberries thrown in to the bottom. The frozen yogurt was firm and mildly tangy. They didn’t do much to the yogurt or to the blueberries.
Frozen yogurt popsicles are more expensive than frozen yogurt and they aren’t as good. If I want a froyo pop that’s dipped, I’d rather have a Yasso peanut butter cup bar.
The popsicle was expensive – more so than a cup of frozen yogurt – and it wasn’t as tasty as frozen yogurt.
You know you love me. X0 X0, fro-yo girl.
* POPBAR: 400 S Baldwin Ave., Shop A14, Arcadia, CA 91007
* ENJOYER: 100 W Broadway, Glendale, CA 91210
* STICK STATION: 62 W Union St., Pasadena, CA 91103
Looking for more frozen yogurt news, discussion boards, and resources? Check out the International Frozen Yogurt Association website at http://internationalfrozenyogurt.com/. The IFYA is the independent voice of the frozen yogurt industry.
