Every Generation Gets the Fro-Yo It Deserves

You’ll do far better if you walk to Eighty-eighth and Madison and dip into the small, cool Madison Fare, a specialty-foods-and-candy storefront opened, in 2022, by the chef Amin Kinana, whose frozen-yogurt creations are, by my estimation, unreserved works of art. The yogurt itself is dense and almost puckeringly sour, and oh, my God, the toppings. They’re some of the most spectacular toppings I’ve ever encountered, an array of ritzy, globe-spanning garnishes that evoke the posh worldliness of peak-era Dean & DeLuca: snowy cubes of Turkish delight, cinnamon-dusted pecans, bitter cocoa nibs, pistachio knafeh, vibrant edible flowers, honey on the comb, actual honest-to-goodness raspberry coulis. At many of the ultra-trendy fro-yo spots I’ve visited lately, the sundaes seem more optimized for photography than for consumption. Many of these magnificent-looking concoctions fail the most fundamental test of a summery treat: do I want to eat every single bite, and maybe even go back for more? Mimi’s in Nolita, which, of all my stops, draws the longest and most youthful lines, is the apotheosis of the problem: pretty, and pricey, and utterly fine. Interview magazine recently built a portfolio around the actor Alia Shawkat tasting the city’s most viral frozen yogurts; of a Mimi’s specimen, she declared, correctly, that it was good but “not that good.” The line you’re waiting in at Mimi’s is, essentially, a line for content. At Madison Fare, by contrast, the toppings maximalism lands you somewhere genuinely delicious, and often surprising.

Madison Fare recently branched out to the Village, opening a dedicated yogurt shop on the same picturesque block of West Eighth Street as Culture, a standard-bearer for yogurt—they make theirs in-house, and it’s available both frozen and fresh. Culture’s toppings don’t hold a candle to Madison Fare’s, but Culture may have the best actual yogurt in the city: ultra-tangy, ultra-rich, in an ever-changing roster of flavors. The fruity selections are terrific—whenever they have blood orange on the menu, I’m awfully tempted—but, somewhat puritanically, I always find myself drawn to the plain. The only fro-yo shop that can compete with Culture for sheer yogurtful yogurtiness is Go Greek, in NoHo, where you can practically taste the probiotics doing the fandango, though the shop’s overt focus on macros and wellness robs the experience of a fair portion of its little-treat joy, and the notably health-conscious selection of toppings skews the flavor profile of a sundae disappointingly toward breakfast parfait. Compared with the fro-yo at Culture and Go Greek, the yogurt at Birdie’s, a cute little spot in the West Village, is so un-yogurtlike that there’s hardly any pleasure in the plain. I’d recommend ordering the coffee or peanut-butter yogurt, dousing it in Biscoff butter and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and telling yourself it’s Mister Softee.

One of my cherished summer rituals is to wander from my Brooklyn apartment over to Culture’s original location, in Park Slope, though lately I’ve been rerouting to Sofreh Café—the casual all-day offshoot of the chef Nasim Alikhani’s magnificent Persian restaurant Sofreh, near Barclays Center—which has installed a two-flavor soft-serve machine. One flavor rotates monthly. (On my most recent visit, it was sour cherry, Barbie-pink and fruity.) The other is always saffron-rosewater, which is sunshine-yellow, heady as a summer garden, and lusciously silken in texture. Sometimes it’s served with a gentle sprinkle of crushed pistachios, sometimes not. Either way, it might be my favorite of the dozens of frozen yogurts I’ve tried. There’s no line for now, but give it time. ♦