When the trip to Yo-Chi was too far and the line at N2 was too long, I headed to Frolic Yoghurt Fitzroy for a fro-yo fix on a hot night. Self serve frozen yoghurt bars have recently been popping up across Melbourne like the rising popularity of those brightly coloured clay bead necklaces everyone is suddenly wearing.
I first came across self serve fro-yo spots in New York and if anyone watched Gossip Girl you’d certainly be familiar with Queen B ordering her mignions to fetch her favourite fro-yo treat. The stores generally follow the same set up, yoghurt is self serve, followed by the opportunity to add your choice of toppings. The price is determined by the weight of your yoghurt creation, where possibilities are only limited by your creativity and your budget. That being said, don’t forget about that last factor before you go crazy with flavours and toppings only to have the cashier hit you with a double digit price, because its not fro-yo etiquette to ask if you can take some yoghurt out! My advice is that if you’re not sure what the price is coming too, you can always start off with less rather than more yoghurt and ask an employee to weigh your cup before returning to add more if you wish.
Frolic Yoghurt Fitzroy is the second Frolic location in Melbourne (the first store is located in Camberwell) and it follows the same traditional setup. The aspect I most liked about Frolic was that while the toppings table included your usual chocolate and nut varietys including chocolate chips, lollies, M&M’s, Reece’s Pieces, almonds, and hot chocolate sauce, (where adding the element of heat makes all the difference) they also added a good dose of fresh fruit amongst their selection.On my visit they had caramelised bananas, rhubarb sauce, strawberries and lychees added in the mix and they didn’t overdose on Popping Boba / Tapioca Pearls / Caviar on steroids / artificial flavour balls I’ve seen at many other fro-yo locations that try to mimic the flavours of a burst of fresh fruit. Frolic had a good flavour selection of yoghurt to choose from, including coconut, strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and vanilla chai, which tasted exactly like a hot cross bun to me, so if you love a punch of cinnamon then you’d enjoy this flavour. I do want to go back and try their salted caramel with figs flavour which sounds delicious! Although at $2.20 per 100 grams, I thought the price was a little steep, considering this selection came to over $10.
The interior was bright and youthful and the late night opening hours will be handy for summer, so if you like your frozen yoghurt bars and don’t want to head out too far (or wait too long) than Frolic isn’t a bad choice.