I have three words for you.  Fro-yo. Has. Arrived.  If you didn’t read my post on Almost Heaven Ice Cream, you might not know what I’m talking about.  For the three plus years since moving back to the Midwest from San Diego, I’ve been waiting for the frozen yogurt trend to roll its way into Ohio from the west and east coasts.  It’s taken a while, but it’s finally here!

Yes, Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt is a chain, and we try to avoid those if at all possible.  However, an exception has to be made in this case, for three reasons: 1) if Canton loves fro-yo as much as I think they will, some local options are bound to pop up, 2) most of my favorite local ice cream shops (like Almost Heaven) are closed during the winter anyway, and 3) I’m getting married next year, so it’s time to start watching the calories! (says the woman holding a piece of bacon).

The format.  Menchie’s is basically a frozen yogurt “salad bar”, whereby you pick up your dish and get in line to start building your own masterpiece.  It starts with over a dozen flavors and combinations of fro-yo; this particular day, they had banana, mango sorbet, peanut butter, blueberry, and raspberry to name a few.  Plus they are “paired” according to tastes, so you can swirl them if you want.

After you’ve loaded up on yogurt, now it’s time to potentially kill your responsible, low-calorie decision at the dry topping bar.  Here we have every kind of candy, candy bar, cereal, nut, or sundae topping you might imagine.  They also have some diet-friendlier choices like yogurt chips and granola.  Immediately after the dry topping bar is the fruit bar (which I didn’t get a picture of) but I was very impressed with the fresh fruit selection, which included huge (and sweet) berries, mangoes, bananas, and more.  Everything looked fresh and delicious.

Following the fruit bar is one more opportunity to blow the good choices you’ve made so far, with a collection of hot toppings, like hot fudge, chocolate, even marshmallow sauce.  After that, voila!  You’re done and ready to pay!  Thankfully they charge by the ounce (45 cents) which means that no matter what you’ve selected at the bar, you still pay the same price.  Yes, this isn’t the cheapest experience – for the five of us, it ended up being over $20.  Buuuuut, it is fun, and for most responsible adults, a few ounces would probably be more than satisfying.

Dave’s berry-licious creation.

And Michael’s masterpiece – I do believe there was a little yogurt in there, somewhere.

All in all, cool place, an excellent start to our fro-yo journey here in Canton.  Everyone wants to watch their weight sometimes, and swapping out the ice cream for some delicious fruit-topped fro-yo is a worthy start.  I checked out the nutritional information on the website, and it appears most flavors are non-fat.  The Island Banana, for example, as 100 calories per 1/2 cup, which isn’t too bad, especially for the taste.  Everything at Menchie’s was delicious, even the kidders loved it.  It’s so much fun to create your own, that we didn’t even miss the extra sugar and fat.  Hooray!