Healthy Yogurt Drinks from Lepur at Nali Patio
Those health geeks are a funny bunch. After the craze for coconut, guess what they're into now? Yogurt. Or to put it another way, yogurt has elbowed all the pretenders aside and returned to its accustomed place in the spotlight.
To welcome it back, Lepur has opened a new 100sqm shop on the first floor of Nali Patio, just opposite Page One Bookstore. "But wait," we hear you cry. “Isn’t that where South Korean soft-serve ice cream store Remicone used to be?” As always, dear reader, you are absolutely right. Finding itself out of favor in these days of health kicks and fruity cheese tea, Remicone has quietly shuffled away.
Its replacement has a suitably fashionable, contemporary look, and is even designed to be selfie-friendly – there's a small takeaway window in the gray façade that people can stop by and take pictures in front of. Through the automatic glass door, there are two lines of booths in the main room, walls sporting a floor-to-ceiling mirror and painted in different shades of gray, and several small booths throughout.
The menu is divided into categories such as yogurt mousse, “yogurt-covered tea” (think cheese tea, but with yogurt instead), fruity teas, smoothies, ice cream, mocktails, and yogurt-made parfait, and the prices are on a par with other downtown establishments. The Sober Up with Yo-sun (RMB 28) came staff-recommended, the waitress explaining that it reminds her of “the sunshine in Tainan, Taiwan.” Well, it is certainly yellow thanks to a base of fruit tea, diced mango and passion fruit, and comes topped with Lepur yogurt instead of cheese. The fruit gives the drink an intense acidity and sweetness, balanced by peppermint and the slightly salty yogurt.
There are also 12 types of pre-packaged Greek yogurt. While the coconut and rose flavor (RMB 16) was creamy and even sported rose petals, we found the coconut flavor a little lacking. Since most of the varieties contain sugar, if you are on a low-carb diet, it may be better go for the no-sugar original yogurt.
Sipping our yogurt tea, we noticed Leonard Cohen’s words “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” written on the wall. However, the fashionable teenage girls sitting around weren't much interested in thought-provoking lyrics, concentrating instead on taking photos of each other looking pretty. We're happy to see Lepur providing an alternative to the currently ubiquitous cheese tea, and the full house on a weekday afternoon shows that customers are certainly buying into this "new" healthy concept.
Lepur
Daily 10am-10pm. A111, Nali Patio, Sanlitun Lu, Chaoyang District (8440 8611)
乐纯：朝阳区三里屯路那里花园A111号
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Photos: Tracy Wang
