I met up with commenter ‘a’ yesterday after work at Mochilato in Irvine. Turns out she lives a few miles from Mr. W’s house. Mochilato is a new dessert restaurant that serves a variety of Japanese mochis with a contemporary twist; instead of just the sweetened red bean paste inside the chewy sweet glutinous ball, they have peanut butter (which I had), white bean (which ‘a’ had), no filling and a variety of other fillings I’d forgotten. The best filling is the ice cream mochis. Not just the traditional green tea or red bean fillings in these ice cream mochis that you’d get in a sushi restaurant; this place had tiramisu, hazelnut, chocolate hazelnut, an entire counter of colorful ice cream filled mochis of many different flavors. The restaurant also serves gelato and Asian-style shaved ice with Asian-style toppings. The best thing about the location aside from its easy-on-the-eye and tasty-in-the-tummy bite-size desserts, is that it’s very large for a snack shop. The front half of the restaurant is all well-lit, leather-bound seating area with large tables that seat 8 and little tables that seat 4, and then deeper into the restaurant is the food area that resembles Haagen-Dazs meets Starbucks. (Yes, they serve coffee, too.)

‘a’ ordered a white bean filled pink mochi that she said was surprisingly good so after we hung out and chatted, I ordered one, along with 2 other mochis, to bring back for Mr. W. I’d wanted to try a bite of the white bean mochi, but by the time I turned around, Mr. W had stuffed the ENTIRE THING into his mouth. =( Who eats mochis like that? Guess I’ll have to go back to buy my own.

Anyone wanna come with?