Food: Umoo and its "handmade yogurt"

We'll admit, the reason we first tried out Umoo, a newly opened yogurt joint on the corner of Xikang Lu and Beijingxi Lu was because it boasted it sold "handmade yogurt." Not frozen. Not homemade. Hand. Made. Yogurt. It gave us visions of workers toiling over pots of curdling milk and bacteria, shoving their hands in and swirling it around to give the yogurt a little more oomph, and the gross out artists in us couldn't wait to see what was going on.

Unfortunately for our imaginations, but fortunately considering everything else, it's "handmade" in the same way Coldstone's ice cream is "handmade" - basically, they pop whatever mixers you want into your yogurt in front of you. Mixers range from taro & banana (21RMB) to corn & dried fruit (23RMB) to blueberry & watermelon (28RMB). You're also given a very Jamba Juice-esque choice of adding a Nutri-boost - protein, fiber, calcium, multi-vitamin, collagen or probiotic - for 3RMB extra.

For your dollars, you get a sleek glass bowl filled with a decent amount of mouth tinglingly sour yogurt. We consider the sourness a good thing, especially compared to the weak, weirdly sweet yogurt we normally come across here. You also get the additives you wanted and a choice of either honey or condensed milk to dump into it. We got the blueberry & watermelon with honey.

Overall, it felt like a very healthy alternative to ice cream shops in the city, though it affects your wallet about the same.

The place and the concept seems to be new - we're curious to see whether gourmet yogurt shops manage to become a new craze, or if they go the way of fro-yo in the city.

Umoo is located on the corner of Beijingxi Lu and Xikang Lu (北京西路和西康路的交口). Time and telephone number information not yet available.

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