Hipster Frozen Yogurt In Williamsburg
/eks/ is Williamsburg's official entry into the great Froyo Wars of 2007. Off the bat, the place gets handicapped because of the name. It's like owner Edong "Neo" Kim is tricking us into saying the letter "x," which is like when the older kids at camp make the younger ones chant "We Are Sofa King We Todd Id." Also his rationale behind the name is confusing and a bit scary.
"What's with the name?" we asked Kim, who is also an artist, filmmaker and recent MFA graduate of CalArts. He explained it's meant to be pronounced like the letter 'X,' adding, "it's a personal thing; I was a bad kid when I was a teenager and nobody trusted me, but now it's different. I graduated with my Masters last year and I'm trying to be nice. I wanted to show them a bad guy can make something.
We do not understand!
The color scheme of the place, entirely red and white, looks like it was lifted right out of a White Stripes album. When we went on a recent Saturday night, it was a weird crowd: 4 lesbians, 5 gays (3 hipster gays, 2 Park Slope gays), 2 straights, and, all told, 9 Asians (6 of whom were working behind the strangely sterile counter). Some patrons sat on strange fungus-like stools; some on the benches outside, near the always-romantic Driggs Avenue.
As far as the yogurtiness of the yogurt goes, it sure beat Pinkberry that's for sure. Mango and plain were on tap and each came with, upon request, fruit. A woman meticulously and somberly placed seven blackberries around the base of my yogurt. But frozen yogurt that comes out of a big steel scary machine, in our opinion, can only be so good. Though /eks/'s yogurt beats Pinkberry's or Tast-D-Lite's cold food product, Yolato's froyo product, which retains the texture of gelato, still beats all three.
