Pinkberry , a relatively new frozen yogurt chain, is the newest darling of that class of people obsessed with things that come from Los Angeles. Having been to their upper east side outpost here in New York (I was buying a used tuxedo from Gentleman's Resale) what puzzles me is that I can't identify what's upscale about it, or good, or distinctive, or in any way different than the old, not much lamented, "I can't believe it's Yogurt", chain. Yes, you can get fruit on your soft serve yogurt, that's true. And there are fashionable looking people lined out the door. But the product is just standard-issue, comfortingly tangy, frozen yogurt. At a blinding $4.04 for a small container.

I finished off my yogurt and looked longingly at the Mcdonald's nearby, where they would have given a cone of equally average soft serve for a dollar. I could have bought a box of blueberries from the street vendor and tipped them on top if I had the inclination, and ate them without having waited for twenty minutes in a line of people enthusing about the supposed anti-oxidants in the green tea flavor.

When that's the reaction your food gets, my guess is that Pinkberry won't much survive its temporary, trendy, froth.