Kotas Reviews Chobani Chipotle Pineapple Yogurt

Greek Yogurt is the yogurt of choice for foodie hipsters these days, even though it is super trendy now. Chobani is my brand of choice, mostly on the strength of their blended Key Lime flavor. They are also aiming for that lucrative "mix-in pack-in" market with a variety of unusual flavor pairings. I looked at one last week, and today we have another one. Let's dive into Chipotle Pineapple!

And by dive, I mean carefully open and consume.

Pineapple is one of those fruits that I think tastes divine by itself, but tends to not mix well with other flavors. It's so sweet that it overpowers other fruit flavorings, and while it tends to meld better with savory fare, the texture isn't always the best thing for a given meal. Chipotle is...certainly a flavor that I do not hate, though I find it is usually (in manufactured foods) simply a code word that means "vaguely spicy, but not too spicy". Actual chipotle flavors seem to have a smokiness that most things labeled "chipotle" do not. All that in mind, how does a pre-packaged yogurt hold up?

At least it looks like granola this time.

Well, it is closer to what I was expecting this time. The pineapple yogurt is pretty decent pineapple yogurt. The Greek style offsets the all consuming sweetness well and make for a good solid blend. The mix-ins this go around and much more granola in style, and the flavor is...well, it is more smokey than spicy, so it's okay. I would not eat them plain. 

BOO YEAH! 

Mixed in, the flavors actually work together somewhat, but still not very good. The chipotle flavor comes through faintly, and the pineapple's sweetness is muted slightly. This is not a bad thing, but mostly what I'm eating is "slightly less sweet pineapple yogurt with some granola", rather than "chipotle and pineapple together at last". Is it bad? No. Is it good? Well, no. It's okay, and never rises above that.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets an unsurprising zero faces. It is neither particularly good nor particularly bad, it just is. Try it, I guess, if it isn't too expensive, but really, just buy some pineapple Greek yogurt and throw in some plain granola. You'll get about the same experience. 

Kotas Reviews Chobani Flip Sriracha Mango Greek Yogurt

We here at Kotas Reviews have decided it is high time that we tried to get healthy and stop eating so much junk. Now that you've all stopped laughing, going forward I am going to try and reduce my number of "why did you consume that" reviews and get more non-food items into my rotation. Those that do remain will hopefully be somewhat less bad for me than the many varieties of Oreos I've eaten over the years, but time will tell I guess. I do have some stuff left in the Winter Backlog, but today's subject is a small, hobbling step toward a brighter, slightly less unhealthy future. Today we review Chobani Flip Sriracha Mango Greek Yogurt.

That is a lot more text that I expect from a breakfast food.

I actually like Greek Yogurt when I'm eating pre-mixed yogurt. It's super tangy and that contrasts well with a number of flavors, most especially Chobani's Key Lime offering, which is my usual breakfast of choice. Greek style yogurt is also just more satisfying to eat, because it is thicker and seems more substantial than the crap they shove in the faux Gogurt tubes my child adores devouring. Mango though is not on my go to flavors list, most especially when paired with Sriracha sauce, and even more especially with savory mix ins!

When exactly did this become a thing? Last time I really looked into packaged yogurt with mix ins, it limited itself to "vaguely healthy but not really" like granola and abjectly dessertish things like chocolate chips. This? I do not know if I can even! Seriously, if there was ever a food I thought could benefit flavor-wise from Sriracha sauce, it most certainly wasn't GREEK YOGURT. Isn't yogurt opposed to Sriracha sauce on the Culinary Elements chart or something? Shouldn't it do double damage to Sriracha Elementals? And why mango of all flavors? Actually, it's used in some hot chutneys so that at least makes sense. I'm thinking through this too hard. Let's rip open the pack!

What the everloving shit am I looking at?

Sweet Mother of Crap. What the FUCK are those things in the side there? Why is there a cashew hidden in there? WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS FINE? Anyway, the little crispy looking things are like the Devil's Own Krispies, though the sriracha flavoring is both more and less intense than I expected it to be. Spicy, for sure, but only spice and none of the flavor that comes with true sriracha. It's not very sriracha-ish at all. There are little sesame sticks as well, and yes, cashews. Because fuck you yogurt! Seriously, these things are kind of random and weird and I am utterly confused by their inclusion, even as just a vehicle for the supposed sriracha flavoring.

At least the terror is hidden from mine eyes.

Mixed in with the yogurt though, I must admit it's not terrible. It's not GOOD by any particular stretch of the imagination, with the overwhelming aura of "creamy mango yogurt, punctuated by Red Hots" vibe that flows across my tongue. The mango yogurt has real mango in it, which is nice, but the yogurt portion simply does not benefit at all from the addition of unflavored "hot-ness". The mix ins add weird and strange textures to the yogurt too, mostly because I expect them to act like granola and they absolutely Do Not. Rice crisps? Sesame Sticks? FUCKING CASHEWS? What the hell were you thinking?

I think I see what they were trying to do here, because Hot Mango Salsa and Sour Cream is a pretty good combination, but this is pretty much trying to make Jurassic Park with a budget for Carnosaur. Good try, lotta heart, very muddled execution that reaches for the moon and actually only gets over the tree in the back yard before crashing into the street.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets 1 (one) Frowny Face. I do like seeing creativity in my yogurt I guess, but this is the insane ramblings of a drunkard made real. It just simply does not work the way it was intended, so I can't really recommend it. Give this one a pass, unless you really, REALLY like to see sriracha put on absolutely anything. Even then, maybe not.