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This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking, and buying right now.
I spent the first half of 2019 carbo-loading my way through Europe as if I were about to run a marathon. But after months of eating kouign-amanns like it was my full-time job, I discovered that my body did not love gluten as much as I thought it did. If I wanted to continue indulging my incessant sweet tooth, I had to find alternatives.
Enter mochi, a Japanese treat that is made from mochiko, or glutinous rice flour (which is naturally gluten-free, despite its name). Mochi possesses an addictive elastic texture with a bounce that feels decadently carby. And to me the highest form of mochi is mochi ice cream, where soft, chewy mochi is wrapped around a frozen ice cream center. You’ve almost certainly seen boxes of these golf-ball-size treats in the frozen dessert aisle of your local grocery store, but my favorite is made by Mochidoki, a New York-based mochi ice cream company with an ingredient-driven ethos.
What sets Mochidoki apart is attention to flavor and ingredients. Cofounder Christopher Wong explains how “the key to making a great tasting mochi is the quality of the ingredients.” Mochidoki works with a team of culinary advisors to create chef-driven flavors with thoughtfully sourced ingredients, like hazelnuts from Piedmont and high quality premium matcha. Wong also describes the seasonal flavors that set Mochidoki apart from your go-to grocery brand “like kuromitsu, a dark syrup from Japan made using unrefined cane sugar, pandan leaves from Southeast Asia,” or—his personal favorite—Seoul Cookie, a riff on the classic Korean beverage sujeonggwa made with cinnamon and persimmon.
If you’re a New Yorker, you can visit a Mochidoki store to create your own adventure, but they also ship nationwide. Mix and match flavors in packs of four or 24 or buy the Signature Collection, which contains two each of their 12 best-selling flavors. Some are nostalgic classics, like vanilla chip and black sesame; some are savory-sweet, like salted caramel and red bean; and some, like vegan lychee and coconut, can whisk you away to a tropical paradise.
Sure, there are plenty of gluten-free frozen dessert options (e.g., ice cream itself before you add in cookie dough or brownie bites), but Mochidoki hits the spot, allowing me to be kinder to my tummy while still giving her a luxurious, indulgent option.