Mochinut

Founded just north of Orange County in Cerritos, Mochinut has become one of the largest mochi donut shops in this country, rapidly expanding to over 30 states, South Korea, and Thailand in only four years. If you’ve seen mochi donuts in a U.S. shopping mall, particularly as a collection of six to eight different colors spread across a line of trays, you’ve probably walked past a Mochinut.

Our first experience with Mochinut was in Irvine at Zion Market, one of its earliest locations, which shared a space with South Korean vendor Chung Chun Rice Hotdog. That location subsequently split off from the growing Mochinut company and became MochiCat Donut & Hotdog. When it operated as Mochinut, either their recipe or their prep left the donuts tasting a little too oily for our preferences, with too little glaze to overcome the greasy flavor; if donuts sat out too long, they became chewy. The oily and chewy dough issues mostly went away after the location became a MochiCat, but persisted at other Mochinuts we visited.

We liked but didn’t love most of the Mochinut flavors we tried, with a green matcha as a superior exception and “sugar” as a particularly basic and unimpressive churro wannabe. Others, such as a purple ube and light yellow yuzu, were pretty good but not worth having again, and we decided we’d only revisit when a new and compelling flavor (such as coffee) made it back into their rotation.

These days, Mochinut locations offer 8-12 choices at any given time, typically selected from 25 primary flavors, with additional flavors available at specific locations on a weekly basis. You’re supposed to watch a given location’s social media to figure out their current flavors – a concept that was kind of cute years ago, but hasn’t aged well.