Mangoberry in Catonsville -- and Picking Up Your Own Mochi Toppings at H Mart

The tart yogurt trend continues to spread, and now you can add a snack to an H Mart run by stopping at Mangoberry down the row.

Mangoberry sells the Korean-style frozen yogurt in H Mart's Catonsville shopping center that is definitely picking up a Korean style. It's inside the Hanoori World section of the center, which also includes a large, casual restaurant and a basement store that sells home goods (including bento boxes).

Mangoberry's yogurt fits the current trend of yogurt that is slightly-sour or flavored with green tea or fruit. You pick a yogurt and then toppings that tend to be fruit, breakfast cereal or exotics like mochi. This is the trend that brought Yogiberry to the Columbia Mall and hordes of Pinkberry to the streets of LA and New York. Bottom line: All these yogurt places are expensive, but Mangoberry is definitely worth the visit. We think Yogiberry has the most-interesting yogurt, but Mangoberry offered an enormous number of toppings (including red beans, which I thought were delicious, but Mrs. HowChow thought tasted too much like beans) -- plus we got to poke around the Hanoori Home Plaza and shop at H Mart.

The real secret: Bring your own toppings. Maybe I'm cheap, but $1 per topping seems expensive for what looks like a few teaspoons of chopped frozen fruit. So we bought an entire

bag of mochi at the H Mart based on a Chowhound post by bmorecupcake. Mochi are slightly-sweet, chewy candy made from rice and sugar. We enjoyed several rounds of these adult gummy bears -- eating them off the top and then re-covering the yogurt. Walk into H Mart and turn left. Look for the $2.99 blue bag of mochi in the top shelf of the refrigerator section next to the video rental place. (Bring your extras home, and you can top a few quick desserts if you get the frozen yogurt at the BP Market in Maple Lawn.)

Mangoberry's other unique offering is a shaved-ice dessert that bmorecupcake has sampled and that appears to be another Korean import.

If you visit Mangoberry, you should also check out the H Mart, my favorite place for food. (Click here for all the H Mart posts.) You'll also see the kitchen items -- including bento boxes -- at the Hanoori Home Plaza on the lower level of Hanoori Town and Jamaican takeout at Golden Krust down the row.

Much of the ground floor of Hanoori Town is a Korean restaurant that was packed when we visited. I want to go back. I ate there when it was called Besoto, and it was a good casual restaurant. I don't know if it has changed, but I was very aware that the crowd looked almost-entirely Korean and ranged from teenagers to white-haired couples, which suggested to me that it is good food.

Mangoberry

Hanoori Town

822-28 N. Rolling Road

Catonsville, MD 21228

NEAR: Mangoberry is in the shopping center with H Mart at Rte 40 and Rolling Road in Catonsville. From Howard County, talke Rte 40 east from Rte 29 and then watch for the Starbucks on the right. Turn there. Mangoberry is right inside the door of the Hanoori Town section of the center.