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Mikawaya

Left to right: Hiyoko, Daifuku, and Chofu

by Eric Dzinski

Mochi means more than you think

Let’s say you find yourself in Little Tokyo after lunch or dinner at a noodle house or sushi bar. You’re in the mood for dessert, but the standard green tea ice cream isn’t going to cut it, and you’re afraid the sweetness of American desserts will overpower the understated flavors of your Japanese entrée. What do you do?

One option is the pastries and ice creams available at Mikawaya Mochi Ice Cream.

Tucked away in the elbow of the Japanese Village Plaza in Little Tokyo, Mikawaya is easy to miss on your first pass, particularly in the torrential downpour of late December when I visited. But three days before Christmas, with cats and dogs falling from the sky and thunderclaps setting off car alarms, my friends and I still had to wait in line to order. The lure of good ice cream is stronger than bad weather.

The ice cream counter spans the wall of the store, packed with flavors ranging from the familiar vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry to the more exotic red bean, mango, and, well, green tea. Each flavor is available as mochi, or scooped into a cup or cone for the less adventurous. Both varieties are sold just on the verge of melting, which keeps the ice cream soft and creamy, and makes the mochi instantly bitable.

But while ice cream is the draw, there is more to Mikawaya than the freezer. A case along the back wall displays an intriguing menagerie of confections that an untrained appetite like mine would be hard-pressed to identify without the helpful descriptions. Most interesting was the fact that these baked goodies were also labeled as mochis.

If you’re only familiar with mochi as the frozen oddity available at Trader Joe’s, then some background is in order. Mochi actually refers to the doughy rice cake that surrounds the ice cream, and is used in a wide range of Japanese desserts. The traditional method for making mochi involves two people pounding rice into sweet submission with hammers, though modern technology has significantly reduced the chances of crushed bones as an added ingredient. Mochi is eaten year-round, but is traditionally associated with Japanese New Year celebrations.

The other surprisingly ubiquitous ingredient is beans. Sweetened azuki beans are used as filling in most of the confections. Though the starchy consistency is difficult to reconcile to the mild sweetness, it generally paired agreeably with mochi.

The White Daifuku, for example, consists of a mochi shell filled with bean paste. It bears a gentle, lingering sweetness far subtler than anything sweetened with cane sugar (to say nothing of high fructose corn syrup). Daifuku Yomogi is a similar confection with an herbal infusion that modestly suggests green tea. The consistency is alternately chewy and gritty, depending on the mochi-to-bean ratio of any given bite. Daifukus feel like raw pizza dough, doubling as a toy to play with while your mouth decodes the novel sensations of eating it.

Chofu consist of heavy pancake batter with the buttery flavor and moist consistency of pound cake. The mildly sweet mochi at the center contrasts the flavor and the texture nicely.

Kanoko looks like a hand-dipped chocolate peanut cluster, but that’s where the similarity ends. It is, in fact, a conglomeration of whole red beans wrapped around a nugget of mochi. What little mochi is there doesn’t do enough to offset the texture or the taste of the beans, which make the overall experience pretty unpleasant. Chalk it up to unsophisticated Western palettes, or the fact that the thing smelled like a pier.

The surprise hit of the afternoon was the Hiyoko, which looks like an Easter Peep made out of bread. It is filled with a baby lima bean paste and egg yolk, which give it a perfectly sweet flavor and the consistency of a hard boiled egg.

There was much more to sample at Mikawaya than we four could manage in one afternoon. Individual desserts, including ice cream mochis, range from $1.10 to $1.85 apiece, so even if your initial selection disagrees with you, you can discard it without much remorse and try something else. With enough experimentation, you’re sure to find something you love, which is fortunate, because they can make you a party box to take home.

Before we left, and despite the cold, I had to try a hazelnut mochilato (gelato wrapped in mochi), which sounds like something that you would order at Starbucks, with the difference being that it was cheap and it tasted wonderful.

Mikawaya Mochi Ice Cream is open Monday until 7 PM, Tuesday through Thursday until 10 PM, Friday until 11 PM, and Saturday until 10 PM. They are closed on Sunday. Located at 118 Japanese Village Mall, Los Angeles, CA 90012. (213) 624-1681. Hit the ATM before you go, because they don’t take plastic.