The Humble Gourmand

I met Steve Davis one night last spring when he bet a friend that he could not correctly identify the flavor of 8 out of 10 Gummi Bears by taste alone. We were leaving a restaurant in Dupont Circle at the time, and as we walked up Connecticut Avenue, Davis handed my friend one Gummi at a time. My friend would guess the flavor then spit it out on the sidewalk; we would spring to the refuse and try to confirm the answer by the streetlights, with Davis laughing all the way at the absurdity of the bet.

In the end, Davis won, pleased for the $1 prize but even happier that he had just gotten someone to indulge in his goofy side.

Frozen yogurt fans in Washington are now all too familiar with Davis’s hijinks. He is the owner of 17th Street’s Mr. Yogato — and a self-described Man of Yogurt or Yogurteer. Since last June, the shop has churned out buckets of fro-yo in such unique flavors as Del Boco Chazel (Chocolate Hazelnut), Duffucino (Cappucino), and Pink Guav-Andy (Pink Guava). The odd names stem from just one of Mr. Yogato’s trademark rules: if a customer places an order for 30 consecutive days, they get a flavor named after them.

One particularly intense Yogato devotee frequented the store for 102 consecutive days.

“We gave him a poster on the wall, an instant flavor, and the ‘Unknowing Neighbor Discount’ where anyone in line around him automatically got money off their order,” Davis said.

There are plenty of other gimmicks to liven up customers’ yogurt-buying experience. If you sing along to Styx’s “Mr. Roboto” when it comes on the radio or recite Mel Gibson’s epic Stirling battlefield speech from Braveheart, you’ll get a discount. Several of the rules explicitly involve Davis: if you can stump him in Seinfeld or The Rock trivia, you get 10% off, and if you can beat him in a game of Boggle, you get a free yogurt.

And these are just the official rules. Davis often challenges Yogato diehards with zany bets a la the Gummi Bear taste-test. For the prospect of a free yogurt, one girl agreed to drink every beverage through a straw for a week straight. Four or five customers have agreed to Davis’ wager to drink nothing but water and whiskey for one week, but only one has succeeded. Davis’ latest dare is for another customer to wear a custom-made Mr. Yogato sash, with glued-on sprinkles and a plastic spoon festoon, for seven straight days.

“Partly the inspiration for the rules came from the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld and partly because I wanted to have a goofy store,” Davis confided. “Why wouldn’t you want to own a goofy store?”

It would be a mistake to think that all the hoopla is an attempt to cover up or divert from the taste of Mr. Yogato’s yogurt. Quite the contrary. The yogurt is exceedingly tasty and worth waiting for in the often out-the-door lines. I personally experienced the Yogato addiction when I went back for seconds no more than 20 minutes after finishing my first. There are four flavors at any one time, two of which are always Original Tangy (a slightly tart yogurt) and Original Soft (a sweeter version for those who can’t handle the tang). Of the two rotating flavors, one is usually a fruit variety and the other is a specialty flavor.

The yogurt is but a blank slate for Mr. Yogato’s mélange of toppings. Yogato boasts an astounding 84 toppings — 47 public and 37 secret. On the public menu there’s pretty much every fresh fruit you could imagine, such as mango and raspberries, along with most candies and cereals. I’m not at liberty to divulge the full list of items on the secret menu, but if you request white chocolate chips or Nutella and give the cashier a knowing wink, you won’t be disappointed.

Davis also encourages visitors to bring in their own toppings. This is how the store acquired flax seed and Lucky Charms. Customers have brought in some toppings that are too off-the-wall, even for Davis, such as liver pate and bacon bits.

“I think my favorite customer-provided topping is li hing mui powder, a dry plum powder from Honolulu that smells like French toast,” Davis says.

Mr. Yogato is also one of the most responsive stores to customer feedback. There’s a whiteboard on the wall for customers to suggest a topping and to rate the specialty flavors. Customers can choose “too much flavorato,” “not enough flavorato,” “too sweetato,” and “perfectato.” Davis diligently adjusts his recipes according to the tallies. If the store is out of a flavor requested by a customer, Davis or another employee will sprint down 17th St. to CVS or Safeway to replenish supplies.

Davis got hooked on frozen yogurt while working in California and hitting up Pinkberry each day. After lamenting the lack of fro-yo in DC, he decided to open up his own shop, with 20 family members and friends. It keeps him busy—by day Davis is the chief aerospace engineer for SpaceX, a space exploration company owned by PayPal founder Elon Musk. (Yogato legend has it that Davis’s career choice was inspired by a viewing of Michael Bay’s Armageddon during his sophomore year). By night Davis is a Ph.D. student in economics at George Mason University in Fairfax. He wrote his last term paper on the effect of temperature, precipitation, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average on yogurt sales.

Now that he’s seemingly conquered the Washington yogurt world, Davis has his sights set on other cities. Just last April a fellow SpaceX worker and friend opened a second Mr. Yogato in Fells Point, Baltimore.

“I drove up for the opening on Privateer weekend in Baltimore,” Davis remembers. “Men in pirate hats were selling fried chicken and lemonade and I was handing out free yogurt. It was awesome.”

Davis’s own plans for expansion include opening a Yogato arcade with shufflepuck, foozball, bubble hockey, ball pit, jousting ring, and Ping Pong, all free for customers. This is quite the upgrade to the original Nintendo in the DC outpost, though they do have a Power Pad there.

DC residents should mark their calendars for June 27, when Mr. Yogato will celebrate its first birthday. Like any one-year old’s party, there will be balloon animals, face-painting, the Yogatolympics, a capella singing, the reunion of all 30 day champions, and the unveiling of two new rules.

When asked for the last word, Davis grinned and responded, “I like yogurt.”

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