Introducing: Frozen Yogurt – 1995

It was a different world in 1995 when The Hot Spot journey began.  The Food Revolution was on the horizon and badly needed.  The Restaurant scene was dominated by much of the same.  Sizzling steaks ruled the stage with the Chinese restaurants.  Pappa Salli’s in Islamabad upped the game and marked a considerable step in the right direction.  Others rushed to imitate their menu, and within a couple of years, plenty of Pappa Sallis Clones popped up.  In Lahore, Zouk upped the game and caught others completely off guard.  The competition took a few years to catch up and then compete.  Lahore’s culinary scene continues to evolve with its quirky eccentricities.  Karachi Café Flo set standards of excellence that they have maintained for so long.  It remains the yardstick to judge all other non-desi restaurants.  The question always remains, is it as good as Café Flo?

In 1995 The Hot Spot opened like a Peanuts comic strip with two brothers resembling Snoopy and Woodstock putting up their lemonade stall in the middle of the street with a blackboard, and a couple of ice cream flavours scratched out on it.  Two naïve brothers lived their dream even if it was in a little bubble and detached from the real world.  Food was much more my kind of lifestyle.  Getting my hands dirty, getting involved and NOT being a Yes Sir man at some nondescript desk job in some depressing office.  The more successful we had with a new flavour, our confidence would grow to try something new.  This enthusiasm has remained undiminished, and hardly a week goes by in our kitchen without some concoction churned up to keep us on our toes, if nothing else. 

There are some disasters, some that sound great on paper as recipes and others that were never a good idea.  Once in a while, you create something that sends the taste buds into a backflip and quadruple summersault mode, and that feeling is as exciting as it was all those years ago.  This week we will be trying a couple of Frozen Yogurt flavours – watch this space for further news, pictures and the revelation. 

We may be wrong, but we believe The Hot Spot was the first operation to offer Frozen Yogurt in our parts, about a decade before the Tutti Frutti lot arrived.  The interesting thing about Frozen Yogurt and why it would be a good alternative in countries with scorching climates is that it is more cooling than ice cream as it has a lower freezing point, has fewer calories and is generally healthier.  It has a tangy freshness, while ice cream tends to be sweeter.  I tend to judge an ice cream by tasting the basic vanilla flavour.  Though there is nothing quite like a beautifully balanced Vanilla ice cream, the Yogurt version is something from heaven, with its subtle flavour, smooth, creamy texture, aftertaste, and incredibly refreshing effect.

Unless somebody claims otherwise, The Hot Spot claims to be the first to make & offer Fresh Frozen Yogurt in Pakistan! 

Remember that if you have a certain flavour, you would like as a Frozen Yogurt, do let us know, and we can churn up a smaller quantity for you to see if you would like it for an occasion or even regularly for yourself.  We will likewise be so happy to recreate any old flavours we may have done in the past IF we can get the same ingredients. 

The test of a true connoisseur is.  Can they tell the difference between a freshly mixed ice cream using fresh products (like strawberry) and another that uses an imported powder mix?  Can you tell the difference between freshly churned ice cream and that produced by machines in factories thousands of miles away using preservatives to keep its texture similar to fresh ice cream?  That keeps us Indie Ice cream makers on a tiny scale from being devoured by the big corporate fish.  The fact that there is a customer who can still tell the difference!