December, 2023
By Abigail Chaverría and Sarahi Guzmán, Staff Reporters
As more fun food places go viral on TikTok, people get curious and want to try them out. Mochinut is an American restaurant chain specializing in mochi donuts, boba, and Korean-style hot dogs. This place opened up in September 2021 inside a Korean market called Hana World Market.
This food chain was originally founded in Cerritos, California, on March 13, 2020 as a spin-off of Chung Chung Rice Dog. Mochinut specializes in mochi donuts, which are a unique twist on traditional donuts, made with chewy rice flour and topped with a variety of flavors and toppings. Mochinut offers 25 flavors of mochi donuts, from plain flavors such as strawberry and chocolate to exclusive flavors such as black sesame and cheesecake donuts.
As we arrived at the location, we were a bit confused as to where the place was since all we saw was a market, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out that it was inside. The section for the mochinuts was pretty, and the sign on the wall was covered by fake grass with a neon “I Love You So Mochi” sign, which was super cute and made the spot pop out more.
When we looked at the menu, there were many options to choose from. For the hotdogs, we ended up getting the potato half and half, which costs $5.75 and is made from half cheese and half hotdog. This one was okay; we agreed the potato could’ve used more flavor to it since it did taste plain. We also got one called the “Hot Cheetos Original” for the same price. This hot dog tasted better than the potato and it had crushed Hot Cheetos on the outside which gave it more flavor.
Of course we also got some of their famous donuts. The price for these are 3 pieces for $9, a half dozen for $16.50, and one dozen for $30. We went with the Ube, Vanilla Chai Latte, and Original Glazed. The Ube donut is coated in milk icing and topped with fruity pebble cereal. We enjoyed the cereal on top, however, the purple glaze on top was not that good. The Vanilla Chai Latte was good and the Original Glazed tasted like your classic glazed donut.
Overall, we think that if you want to try out this place for yourself, we highly recommend the Hot Cheetos hot dog, and as for the mochi donuts we suggest getting the Vanilla Chai Latte and Original Glazed mochinuts and serving it with some milk!
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