These mochi donuts perfectly balance a light, chewy exterior with vibrant fillings

Metro Morning's food guide Suresh Doss joins the program every week to discuss the many great GTA eateries he's discovered.

This week, he's bringing us to Momoco Donuts and My Sweet Tooth in Hamilton. 

Below is a transcript of Doss's conversation with guest host Jill Dempsey, edited for length.

Doss: Mochi is a category of sweet and savoury snacks that originated in Japan several centuries ago. Fundamentally what it is, is the idea of pounding a specific type of glutinous rice into a paste using a mortar and pestle, letting it cool, and then you shape it. Picture a bun in the palm of your hand. It's slightly chewy. It's also soft. It has a sticky and stretchy quality to it. But at the end of the day, the mochi itself is quite muted in taste. It's all about the texture, and it's a vessel for a variety of different fillings. There could be seasonal fruit with some cream in it, or it could be ice cream. It could be bean paste stuffed inside this little ball.

Dempsey: It looks like they can be made right into donuts.

Doss: Yeah, so this is a very popular thing... Mochi donuts became quite trendy in North America about eight years ago. They're really popular in Hawaii and they're also popular in Japan.

Picture eight small Timbit-like pieces connected together in this round shape and it's done with a dispenser and then fried. The mochi donut is made like a donut, but a little chewier and a little sort of bouncy. And ultimately it is also a vessel for whatever you want to top on top of it.

Dempsey: They're beautiful. Should I try one now?

Doss: Yes, I think you should.  You can find mochi donuts in Toronto, but I think if you want exceptional mochi donuts, you're gonna go to this place. This is Momoco in Hamilton.

Dempsey: It's so good.

Doss: They're quite fun to eat and easy to share as well. 

Dempsey: They're very chewy.

Doss: The couple that started at this place, Jia and Peter, started another bakery called My Sweet Tooth, which I will come back to in a minute. They wanted to expand into mochi. So they opened Momoco recently in Hamilton.

Dempsey: What inspired them to focus on the mochi donut?