Sweet creations are more complex than what you’ll buy in the yogurt aisle, like what your mom might have assembled for you if she was a hippie with a trust fund. In the foreground, toasted coconut, fresh pineapple, hazelnuts and mint topped yogurt sweetened with agave nectar. Behind it, yogurt flavored with clover honey is showered in blueberries, raspberries, chunks of strawberry and granola.
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The “Drink Chobani” category of the menu comprises freshly pressed juice mixed with yogurt. The Citrus Ginger Carrot at left is unique to The Woodlands location. It’s made with apple, mango, banana, carrot, fennel, ginger, lime and turmeric. Mixed Berry Banana on the right isn’t the saccharine dessert you might expect a fruit smoothie to be. But our favorite was the Green Goodness, essentially a green juice that includes avocado, cucumber, fennel, celery, spinach, parsley and mint, thickened with Greek yogurt.
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The “Drink Chobani” category of the menu comprises freshly pressed juice mixed with yogurt. The Citrus Ginger Carrot at left is unique to The Woodlands location. It’s made with apple, mango, banana, carrot, fennel, ginger, lime and turmeric. Mixed Berry Banana on the right isn’t the saccharine dessert you might expect a fruit smoothie to be. But our favorite was the Green Goodness, essentially a green juice that includes avocado, cucumber, fennel, celery, spinach, parsley and mint, thickened with Greek yogurt.
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The Pico de Gallo + Chipotle “Savory Creation” was created for the Woodlands’ menu. The salsa on top is made with fresh smoked tomatoes heavy with cumin. Cilantro and lime juice brighten it up.
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The Pico de Gallo + Chipotle “Savory Creation” was created for the Woodlands’ menu. The salsa on top is made with fresh smoked tomatoes heavy with cumin. Cilantro and lime juice brighten it up.
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The Mango + Avocado is the most popular bite in the New York locations, says Aires. The strange-sounding combination works surprisingly well thanks to a grounding of jalapeños and cilantro. Other “Savory Creations” are more Turkish in character, like hummus with za’atar, and red pepper harissa with feta, both served with simit chips instead of the blue corn tortilla chips pictured.
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The Mango + Avocado is the most popular bite in the New York locations, says Aires. The strange-sounding combination works surprisingly well thanks to a grounding of jalapeños and cilantro. Other “Savory Creations” are more Turkish in character, like hummus with za’atar, and red pepper harissa with feta, both served with simit chips instead of the blue corn tortilla chips pictured.
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The only place in greater Houston we’ve found to get simits, or Turkish bagels, is Sunday brunch at Nazif’s Turkish Grill & Deli. At Chobani, they’re made in New York and shipped to The Woodlands, where they’re served in sandwich form. This one is filled with roasted turkey, avocado, pickled peppers and red onion, frisée lettuce and a spread of smoked labneh.
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The only place in greater Houston we’ve found to get simits, or Turkish bagels, is Sunday brunch at Nazif’s Turkish Grill & Deli. At Chobani, they’re made in New York and shipped to The Woodlands, where they’re served in sandwich form. This one is filled with roasted turkey, avocado, pickled peppers and red onion, frisée lettuce and a spread of smoked labneh.
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In New York, ingredients are more unapologetically Turkish, like a simit filled with pastirma (think pastrami) and kasseri cheese. This one, filled with smoked salmon and dill-and-chive labneh, brings New York to Texas.
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In New York, ingredients are more unapologetically Turkish, like a simit filled with pastirma (think pastrami) and kasseri cheese. This one, filled with smoked salmon and dill-and-chive labneh, brings New York to Texas.
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Sweet creations are more complex than what you’ll buy in the yogurt aisle, like what your mom might have assembled for you if she was a hippie with a trust fund. In the foreground, toasted coconut, fresh pineapple, hazelnuts and mint topped yogurt sweetened with agave nectar. Behind it, yogurt flavored with clover honey is showered in blueberries, raspberries, chunks of strawberry and granola.
Unless you live in the neighborhood, you probably don’t know about the new Wal-Mart on Kuykendahl Road in Tomball. It’s the second in a pilot program of more modern, health-conscious stores for the chain. But if you’re not actively looking for the rack filled with Burt’s Bees products or the cell-phone-enabled check-out, you likely won’t notice the difference. Yet you can’t miss the Chobani Café, worlds away from the McDonald’s you’re more likely to find feeding the People of Wal-Mart. It may sound like an exercise on the “Celebrity Apprentice,” but it doesn’t taste like one.
In fact, the café, which opens this weekend, is more than just the area’s first yogurt-centric restaurant. It’s also the only place we’ve found in greater Houston that offers Turkish bagels, known as simits, seven days a week. At Chobani Café, they’re served as sandwiches spread with labneh, the Middle Eastern cream cheese equivalent made from strained yogurt.
But the biggest surprise is that nothing at Chobani Café tastes like fast food. “Hamdi tastes everything,” Chobani’s senior manager of communications, Blair Aires, told us over simits. Sweet dishes are not cloying like most grocery store yogurt. And Aires says that flavor balance makes sense. She sees the everything-yogurt eatery as “the physical manifestation of our brand. It’s a good introduction to yogurt, too.” And a good education in looking beyond the Wal-Mart sign and enjoying good food for what it is.
Alice joined Houstonia in November 2015 and has been relishing exploring the city’s vibrant food scene ever since.
She began her journalism career at age 13 with a cult film criticism ’zine. As an adult, stints with WWE Magazine and EatingWell led to her job as senior food writer at Vermont’s alternative newsweekly, Seven Days, in 2008. In that capacity, she became one of the state’s most well-known TV and radio personalities. Her first book, Vermont: An Explorer’s Guide, was published in 2015. Alice has won an AltWeekly Award for Best Food Writing, two Daysies for Best Print/Online Journalist, and two "Top Social Foodie" awards from Burlington Social Media Day.
