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Pinkberry- a product of Korean Culture?
Hello everyone. I've set-up this blog to record some of my random observations in life, business, the Korean American and Asian American community as well as various musings, intellectual, social, religious, etc.
My first thoughts are regarding the phenomenon known as Pinkberry.
As many of you are aware, Pinkberry is that frozen yogurt place that has been sprouting up like hallucinogenic green neon mushrooms all around the Los Angeles area. The LA Times calls it the "taste that launched a thousand parking tickets" a reference to what customers were willing to give up to get their Pinkberry fix. This yogurt isn't like the TCBY soft and sugary stuff some of you may remember. It's more tart rather then sweet, less icy and has more consistency. It's attracted a cult following and is pretty much the biggest dessert trend in style conscious Los Angeles. Paparazzi just hang out near the WeHo Pinkberry to snap picks of pretty much every twenty and thirty something celebrity under the sun! Furthermore, it has strangely addictive qualities, and detractors call it "Crackberry."
Now, some of you may know this and some of you may not, but Pinkberry is owned by Korean Americans Sherry Hwang and her boyfriend Young Lee. The couple vehemently says that their idea is original and came directly from Italy and Hawaii, but the obvious fact of the matter is (unless your IQ is below 70) that they copied the concept from similar yogurt chains in Korea, most noticeably Red Mango. Both have very similar taste, concept and even logo. However, Red Mango has been around 18 months longer then Pinkberry, thus it is obvious as to who copied who. Now, I'm not going into all the legal and moral ramifications and the broadsides of accusations out there. The point I want to explore are the unique aspects of Korean culture that this type of yogurt is unconsciously displaying.
When I first tasted Pinkberry I was like, "Hummm, it's the soon tofu of desserts!" As most of you know, soon tofu is "soft" tofu which by itself has no taste. It's added to a boiling bowel of soup and then "takes on" the flavor of whatever is in the soup. Thus, is Pinkberry style yogurt. Very little taste in itself, but takes on, and is influenced by, the taste of whatever toppings you put in it. A "base" flavor, if you will, to balance out the more stronger flavors of the other ingredients. A similar situation with rice. You don't eat rice by itself (maybe sometimes if it's fried rice, but Koreans rarely eat that). Koreans will take a bland, tasteless staple like rice and eat it with spicy, sweet and tart concoctions called "banchan" and create a sort of culinary balance. The banchan itself is not easy to eat alone, being spicy and extreme to the taste buds. Hence you lighten the flavor by eating it with rice. Another example is Korean alcohol. It's also bland. Koreans tend not to drink flavored cocktail beverages, but lean more on tasteless light vodka called "soju" and watery beers that Westerners say lacks a beer like taste. Koreans favor this type of alcohol because it goes well with their bar food, otherwise known as "anju" which also leans on the spicy, sweet and tart side. In other words, Anju would taste good with Hite or Cass branded beer (Korean brands), but would taste kinda weird with Guinness or Newcastle. Thus, the Korean culinary tradition is full of examples of having a "base" or tasteless center ingredient complimenting the stronger tastes of secondary ingredients to create a more or less balanced overall food experience. It's this mix of extreme flavors on the same table all at once that creates the natural addictive nature of Korean food, where people who grew up with the stuff can't live long without it and undergo withdraw symptoms if they haven't had it in awhile. All you Korean food lovers know what I'm talking about. Same thing with Pinkberry. It's the sudden, but subtle tart taste that, blended with and complimentary secondary ingredients, that fulls the mouth and gives you that rewarding feeling which has addicts coming back for more.
This leads into my next point: Pinkberry's obvious influence from the Korean confectionary tradition. Korean confections tend to be light on taste compared to Western confections. At the same time, many Koreans believe that Western confections, particularly American, overwhelm pastries with sugar and other sweeteners. Thus, by comparison, Korean confections have fruit, custards or bean curds added in, and are very light on the sugar, icing and whip cream. Koreans like to have the natural sweetness of fruits (or other secondary ingredients like bean curd or custards) add to the sweetness of pastries instead of juicing it up with tons of sugar. This is apparent in the differences of Korean and American cakes, but nowhere is this more apparent then in the Korean and American philosophy on yogurt.
Before the advent of players like Pinkberry and in the height of the yogurt craze in the late 80's and early 90's, yogurt did its best to imitate ice cream. Frozen yogurt at this time was full of sugar, artificial sweetness, artificial coloring, icy and soft and barely resembled the original source. Korean yogurt, on the other hand and exemplified by the Pinkberry and the earlier Red Mango examples; is plain, has subtle taste, has an addictive sour / tang to it, much closer to the original source and depends on the balance of a number of secondary toppings to add to and / or compliment the flavor of the yogurt, which would be rather tart and tasteless by itself. The secondary toppings such as strawberries, chocolate chips, Captain Crunch and Coco Pebbles cannot be eaten by themselves without overwhelming the palate. That's why cereal is eaten with milk, chocolate chips are imbedded in cookies and strawberries taste best with champagne.
In my opinion, Pinkberry and Red Mango style yogurt is a product of, as well as a continuation and variation of, the Korean culinary and confectionary tradition that draws from its inspiration rice and banchan, soju and anju, and lightly sweeted pastries topped with and / or embedded with fruit.
06:41 PM
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