Summer is officially here, and in Southern California that means temperatures that can make the mercury boil. Sadly, gone are the days of ice cream trucks and vendors trundling down the street and through the park. But over the recent years, the popularity of frozen yogurt has offered in their absence as a healthier and thriftier alternative that still tastes like our favorite dessert. For those who keep Kosher, healthy, or their money on their mind, there’s no better option than the frozen yogurt shop Icicles.
Located in a shopping mall on Eastbluff Road (a continuation of University Drive), Icicles is merely an eight-minute drive from UC Irvine’s campus. Just walking into the mint blue-themed interior of Icicles is enough to cool you off.  It offers its customers ten different flavors of frozen yogurt: cake batter, vanilla, chocolate, coffee, dulce de leche (milk caramel), and red velvet cake, to name a few. The peanut butter flavor is a little obscure and the cookies ‘n cream choice a bit bland. The mango, though, has a smart fruity taste akin to a slap in the face while the intriguingly-named euro tart packs a sweet-tangy kick completely different from the regular tart flavors you find at other frozen yogurt shops. And at the price of thirty-nine cents an ounce, it’s a great dessert stop for any college student. Five dollars’ worth of yogurt is enough for both you and a friend.
Not only is the price appealing, but Icicles also offers several attractive deals to its customers to help them get more yogurt for their buck. A gift card of $20 or more lands you a free 10-ounce yogurt with your flavors of choice. All quarts of strawberry and banana yogurt are half the price of their peers, non-fat, and have no sugar added to them. If that’s not enough to attract people using small change to treat themselves these days, Icicles will reward you with a free quart of frozen yogurt if your yogurt weighs in at exactly 12 ounces.
The shop also has the standard toppings to enliven the taste of your yogurt: chocolate chips, granola, crumbled peanuts, strawberries, mochi, sprinkles, and the like. More unfamiliar toppings include mandarin oranges, toasted coconut strips, Whoppers, chocolate candy rocks, hefty brownie bites, and walnuts. Syrup toppings include Ghirardelli’s chocolate, white chocolate, and caramel chocolate, along with Monin’s sugar-free dark chocolate. Newcomers to the world of frozen yogurt would be remiss to not try the simple but delectable combination of euro tart and mochi.
To be fair, Icicles is not all that different from other frozen yogurt chains such as Pinkberry and Yogurtland, the latter being more conveniently located for college students in the University Town Center. Most of the toppings are identical, and the flavors rarely differ. But with a Kosher array of yogurts and an affordable price, Icicles should definitely stand out as an appealing location for the common Jewish college student.
For more information, visit Icicles at 2545 Eastbluff Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92660, call (949) 760-9900, e-mail info@iciclesyogurt.com, or see the website at www.iciclesyogurt.com.
Are the toppings kosher???