I am a Whole Foods addict. I spend an ungodly amount of time perusing their aisles for healthy, creative, or straight up weird food creations, and an ungodly amount of money on their store-ground peanut butter. One of my favorite ways to spend an evening is getting dinner at their hot food bar and scrolling through the internet on their free wifi.
When I heard a rumor that Whole Foods was going to bring a mochi ice cream bar to its stores, I freaked out. The article I saw showed what the bar looked like, and I knew that it was right up my alley. Even though I had never eaten mochi before, I know a good dessert when I see one, and this looked like something I just had to try.
I assumed that they'd roll out the mochi ice cream bars to only a few stores at first, probably in high-traffic locations like California or New York, and that I'd have to wait awhile to get my hands on some Whole Foods mochi. However, my friend told me that she had tried the mochi bar at my local Whole Foods and was hooked.
After I screamed at her for 20 minutes for not telling me the moment she went and for another 20 minutes with excitement, I called up two friends who also love mochi, ice cream, and Whole Foods to go try it for ourselves.
The Bar
When we arrived at Whole Foods and found the mochi bar, all three of us freaked out a little bit. It looked exactly how it did in the article I saw online — a freezer case with trays piled high with mochi inside.
They have pretty decent-sized plastic containers available to put your desired flavors into — the boxes are big enough to get a pretty solid number of mochi, so that was a plus for all of us.
The way the mochi is presented makes it pretty irresistible, so if you're a sucker for sweets but trying to avoid dessert I'd steer clear of the display altogether.
Flavors
We were overwhelmed by the sheer number of flavor options. There were the classic red bean, green tea, vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate options, but also coffee and mango. I've read that other locations also have passionfruit and lychee flavors, but those were not available at my Whole Foods.
I went for strawberry, coffee, and green tea, while my friends also tried the vanilla and chocolate flavors.
My Experience
Real talk: This stuff is crack. It's perfectly soft and squishy on the outside, but refreshingly cold and creamy on the inside. The textures of the mochi and the ice cream work perfectly together, and every variety we tried was saturated with flavor.
My friends and I decided that you can't really go wrong with any flavor, because everything we tried was so amazing. It was tough, but all of us managed to pick a favorite. Between the three of us, our three favorites were strawberry, green tea, and coffee, but you should just pick your favorite ice cream flavor.
One of my friends had gone to Japan this summer and had ~legit~ mochi, which traditionally doesn't have ice cream in it. She concluded that, although probably not super authentic, mochi ice cream is delicious. Since I wasn't aiming for an authentic mochi experience (if I was, I wouldn't go to a grocery store), I'm with her on that one.
This was our box approximately five minutes after we checked out, no shame.
Overall, the mochi bar at Whole Foods was everything I wanted it to be. The presentation was exciting, the flavor range was wide, andthe mochi tasted amazing. I'd 10/10 recommend trying it when a mochi bar comes to your Whole Foods. It is pretty expensive, at $2 a pop, but I'd say it's at least worth a try.