Yolé

This is a slightly late post, especially since there are only 3 days left for the limited edition coconut soft serve to be on the market.

It is only confirmed recently (last week, to be exact) that the soft serve, imported from Italy, is vegan friendly. It even has a “veganOK” symbol on it, a symbol used in Italy to certify what is vegan and what isn’t. Upon hearing this news, the entire troupe of us vegan foodies went berserk, trying to get our hands on the soft serve before it runs out.

The first time I tried it, I wanted to try the ice cream on its own, and thus decided to settle for the small cup, which includes one topping of choice.

As an avid strawberry lover, I went straight for the strawberry topping before I even considered other options. It was a great choice, as the strawberry was lightly sweet and slightly sour, which allowed it to be rather compatible with the much sweeter ice cream base.

The ice cream base, however, is rather… interesting. It borders between sweet and savoury, with a strong saltiness accompanying the typical sweet ice cream taste. I suppose the purpose of the added salt is to prevent quick melting since this is in the form of a soft-serve instead of the usual scoop (vegan) ice-creams, and to highlight out the sweetness. But it appears to be a little overdone, thus making it a little more difficult to accept the taste. There might also be the influence of preconceived expectations, that coconut ice cream should taste like what is currently present in the market (with reference to places such as Pong, Brownice Loco coco, CocoCane Coconut Sorbet, Mr bean, just to name a few) – refreshing, creamy, and mildly sweet, with a strong coconut taste, resembling the experience of eating a frozen, dense Thai young coconut. Yolé, however, is slightly salty, rather sweet (likely sweetened by cane sugar?), and slightly icy, much like the sorbet soft serve at Yogurtland.

Despite the initial confusion over what to think about the base, I decided to bring my friend to yolé again, while we catch up after not meeting each other for a rather long time. This time round, I managed my expectations of the ice cream’s taste, and got a large Ibiza (2 crunch, 2 fruits, 1 sauce) as we wanted to try out more toppings.

While most people might think that vegan toppings at Yolé includes only fruits and perhaps jam, that is far from the truth. As far as I am aware, here is a list of what toppings are vegan:

Crunch: caramelised sunflower seeds, caramelised cookies (crushed lotus biscuits), crushed oreos, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, almond biscotti

Sauce: all fruit jams and cookie sauce

All fruits are vegan.

We got strawberry, kiwi, caramelised cookies, caramelised sunflower seeds, and the cookie sauce, which was a heavenly combination. The fruits were very refreshing, and where llaollao’s sanum added a second layer of the 3 fruits, yolé replaced it with more ice cream. The sandwiching allowed the crunches and fruits to blend well with the ice cream, such that every mouthful (if you dig vertically like I do, that is) is an even spread of toppings. While my first experience with the ice cream was rather sweet, as was the cookie sauce, the combination is surprisingly less overwhelming than I had expected. Perhaps because I paired part of it with the fruits, but the sauce was actually really delicious with the ice cream. Though it is not chocolate based, the sauce appear to become thicker and almost caramelise on the ice cream, adding on a completely different texture as I scooped down. It is slightly gooey and sticky, but not in a bad way – more like eating caramel toffees.

While there is definitely room for improvement, I am heartened to see a soft serve chain so readily available (28 outlets islandwide) offering vegan options, even though it is limited. The negative reviews online made me extremely confused – people appear to believe the soft serve is meant to be yogurt, and since it didn’t meet their expectations, they were complaining incessantly over the soft serve. The overwhelming response from those who are aware that the soft serve is vegan, however, shows a strong demand for readily available vegan soft serve options. I only hope that the chain is able to recognise this, and in educating their employees on how to recognise vegan options (for instance, understanding that coconut milk is from coconuts, not cows), along with marketing the soft serve as dairy free, be able to successfully promote such options.