Within two blocks of my office there is a gelato place, a national ice cream chain, a new fangled sour frozen yogurt place, and a traditional frozen yogurt place**. With DC in a heat wave, I've decided to take one for the team and do a comparison of the local ice cream varieties with the following criteria:
Cost: How much does a small cup cost? How many ounces are in that cup? (5 points)
Variety: How many different flavors are there? Are there toppings available? How many? I am a fickle consumer and I need to know that I whatever I am craving will be satisfied. (5 points)
Taste: Is it delicious or not so much? Is there a strange aftertaste? Do I want more? (10 points)
Refreshment: It is over 90 degrees outside. Am I cooler after eating this? (5 points)
Results are listed last to best.
Ben & Jerry's Ice-cream:
Cost: $4.57 for 3.3 oz cup. Still expensive for my taste, but middle of the pack for today's comparisons (3 points)
Variety: With 14 ice cream flavors, 6 sorbet/yogurt flavors, 12 toppings, the ice cream joint came out on top with variety. (5 points)
Taste: I got my favorite ice cream flavor, cookie dough. It was packed with cookie dough, but it was really creamy and sweet. Overwhelmingly so. I didn't come close to finishing it. (6 points)
Refreshment: Ice cream was strangely non-refreshing. I had to take long pauses between bites to completely process the bite in my mouth. I was hot before my next bite. (2 points)
Total: 16 points
Ice Berry Sour Yogurt:
Cost: $3:50 for a 5oz cup. This was the cheapest and most generous portion for a small, but I still had a hard time shelling out that much money for a small treat. (4 points)
Variety: What they lacked for in flavors (4), the yogurt place more than made up for in toppings (22). The majority of toppings were fresh fruit and I almost felt healthy eating this. (3 points)
Taste: Sour yogurt is not for everyone. It is tart and there isn't enough cream in the yogurt to be fully satisfying. That said, my honeydew melon flavor wasn't too tart, not too sweet, and didn't have an after taste. I finished almost the whole cup! (7 points)
Refreshment: I was completely refreshed eating this. The yogurt was light and cold and it almost felt like I was in air conditioning. (5 points)
Total: 19 points
Pitango Gelato:
Cost: $4:95 for a 3oz cup. The most expensive of the bunch (2 points)
Variety: With 10 gelato flavors and 10 sorbet flavors, there was plenty to choose from. I didn't see any toppings though. (4 points)
Taste: Gelato hit the jackpot. It was creamy and rich, but not so much so that I had to pause to digest between bites. I got a cup of coconut and the flavor tasted like actual coconut, not like coconut flavoring. The girl who rung me up noticed I was taking notes and said that if I was looking for refreshment, I should try some of their sorbets. So I did. The mojito was divine. If I didn't have to go to work / wasn't so full from eating ice cream for the last hour, I would have sat there all day and eaten every flavor they had.(10 points)
Refreshment: Better than ice cream, not as good as yogurt (4 points)
Total: 20 points
So, there you have it. If you are hot and want a tasty treat, get some gelato.
**I went to what I thought was a traditional frozen yogurt place. I was expecting something like an updated TCBY, but what I found was buzz words like "probiotics" and calorie counts. I got completely overwhelmed and left without a frozen treat in my hand.
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