Mochinut opened just a few weeks ago, at the end of September. They currently have 8 locations, most of them in CA, and planning to open another 8 or 9 locations, again, mostly in CA. We got to try some mochi donuts from The Dough Club in Chinatown right before the pandemic, and we really enjoyed them! So, we were excited to try Mochinut’s donuts.
This Mochinut location is inside a Korean bakery, offering bread, baked goods, and some cakes. Most of the customers we saw during our visit were Koreans, which makes sense, since it is located within the strong Korean community. It is also right next to Korean supermarket, so it is convenient if you want to do a little grocery shopping at the same time, especially if you are looking for some Asian grocery!
Although Mochinut menu shows tons of flavors (24 flavors!), but they only offer a handful of flavors a day at this location. I don’t know if this is how they are planning to operate, as they are small shop, or they are just testing out different flavors until they can get all the flavors sorted out? And some of the flavors they offer are not even in Mochinut’s menu. They offer different flavors at each location, which is fun!
We got there when they opened, and they didn’t have any mochi donut… We asked the staff, and she told us they will be ready in 30 minutes. We decided to take a walk for 30 min to kill time. After 30 min, we went back, and they had only two flavors… they were supposed to have six flavors for that day, accordingly to their Instagram. So we asked the staff again, and she said the rest of the flavors will be ready in another 30 min… well, we learned not to go there when they first open, if we want to have all the flavors…
So, we killed time for another 30 min, total of one hour, and went back. They finally had more than two flavors! On this day, they had five flavors, plus “plain”. And the flavors were slightly different from advertised on their social media. Two of the flavors they advertised, Black Sesame and Matcha, were not available, which we were very disappointed about…but they have a flavor that they didn’t have on their list, Strawberry Pebbles.
Well, what can you do? We can’t get them to produce a flavor they decided not to make that day for some reason… so we got all the five flavors that they did have for this day. They sell them by three, six, and a dozen. We each had a coupon for a free mochi donut, so we each got three ($8.85/3 donuts) plus one free. Thank you Mochinut!
They placed the mochi donut in the plastic container, which are more of less airtight. With the heat and steam coming out of the donut, I don’t recommend the container to be closed for too long. Otherwise, they get too much moisture from the steam, and get soggy.
We first tried the Strawberry Pebbles. I wish if the coating on the donut was more even, there were some donut peeping through where there was no coating. Oh well, that comes with a manual job of hand-dipping into the glaze, so that is ok. The pebbles were fun, providing that nice crunchy texture and fruity flavor. The strawberry coating was more sugary than anything, but it was a fun donut overall.
I was really excited about Ube, as I really like ube. It had some same shaved coconut on top. The flavor was not exactly what I expected. It tasted like potato… Well, Ube is made from purple yam, but usually taste more “dessert” than potato… not sure if I liked this favor…
Churros was a-ok. The cinnamon sugar coating with some caramel drizzle on top to re-create the churros flavor, but somehow did not bring a big flavor. The donut itself was good, fluffy and chewy in a good way.
Yuzu was another flavor I was excited about, but it was more sugary than I’d like, which was covering up the yuzu flavor. The added yuzu topping did help bring out the flavor. It looked like yuzu jam? Whatever it was, I think was a good idea to bring the yuzu flavor forward and center.
The last but not least, Coffee. I was not sure about this one, as we were more interested in Asian flavors. But as soon as I stated to tear it into two, the aroma of coffee woke me up! The flavor of the coffee was really present, not bitter but not overly sweet, just right. This one was surprisingly our favorite one! Great coffee flavor that went great with the fluffy mochi donut, a great brunch item for sure!
After trying five different flavors, only one of them really “wow-ed” us, which was coffee. I would love to have the coffee one again… And as Mochinut continues to offer different flavors, I am sure there will be many other tasty mochi donuts creation to greet customers.
Mochinut – 1369 16th St, Fort Lee, NJ 07024