Red Mango

Critic's Review

The Red Mango has closed.

Some "entrepreneur" lost his shirt on this one.

*******

Yogurt place are popping up everywhere; it's a relatively low budget franchise operation that's a cash cow for the franchisor and relatively easy to run for a franchisee. I think there's way too many of them, but we'll see.

If you're a Curb Your Enthusiasm fan you might have seen the Pinkberry episode; Pinkberry and Yogurberry are the big name operations that started the craze in the US. There's a Pinkberry in Aventura and they're opening a Yogurberry in the Broward mall later this summer; but I've never been to either.

Red Mango, however, is the model for all of the US based operations, having started in South Korea in 2003. There's much debate of who copied who; in the end they're all copycats. I don't really care. I was just hoping to get some good yogurt.

This place is located upstairs just over the food court on the North side. It's not the best location in the mall. There are a couple of tables outside the store; the store is just a self service counter. They have cups stacked up and you just grab a cup and fill it with whatever yogurt you want. They have a bunch of flavored yogurts including, you guessed it, mango.

I wanted to try the original. I'd heard that their plain frozen yogurt was pretty good. It's supposedly non-fat, gluten free and probiotic. Virtual health food.. You pay by the ounce; todays price is 54 cents per ounce. After getting your yogurt you head over to the counter and load it up with whatever you like. They have nuts and fruit and sprinkles and candy stuff. I went for blueberries, strawberrys (they have them diced pretty small), blackberries and chocolate chips. There's no extra charge for whatever you get; it's all by weight.

They rang this up as a large cup, even though it was the smallest cup available. It's not clear if you're paying for the cup, but I suspect you are and that's why they don't have small cups out. This was $3.95, which is a pretty good price considering that you may pay $5 for a scoop of gelato.

I have to say that this is really good stuff. Very cold; not your normal mushy soft serve. This was almost like ice cream without the sugar. A little tangy. I think I have to try some of the other places in town.