Mochi is now being used as a pizza crust by the company that founded Japanese handroll concept Sushirrito.
The chewy and agreeably gummy substance is made from glutinous rice flour and has long been used as a coating for ice cream treats in Japanese restaurants and retail, and increasingly is being used to make uniquely textured doughnuts and other desserts.
Peter Yen and Ty Mahler opened a brick-and-mortar location of Mochiko Mochi Pizza in Burlingame, Calif., last November and then started offering the menu at their San Francisco Sushirrito location at the beginning of the year. That was followed in March by adding the offering to the Palo Alto Sushirrito.
“It’s basically Asian-style pizza,” said Yen, who added that both his wife and the wife of Mahler, the concepts’ chef, were fans of mochi in desserts, and the founders wanted to see what savory applications they could find for it.
“We thought it would be interesting if we could try and reinvent pizza crust using mochiko flour [glutinous sticky rice powder],” Yen said.
Mahler used the downtime he had during COVID to try different iterations and came up with a crust that, similar to mochi doughnuts, was crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.
Mochiko’s menu is small and eclectic. One pie features America’s favorite pizza topping, pepperoni, with mozzarella cheese, tomato jam, and garlic chives.
Another has spicy minced pork with mozzarella, spinach cooked with sesame oil, and Romano cream sauce, and a third pie has soy sauce-braised beef with corn, mozzarella, and roasted garlic kimchi.
The chicken curry pizza has Japanese-style fried chicken karaage with mozzarella, corn, jalapeño peppers, a Japanese-style curry sauce and cilantro, and a new Spam pizza has that meat with pineapple, mozzarella, tomato jam, and garlic chives.
Yen said all of the pizzas sell pretty well, but the most popular order is a “combo,” which lets guests divvy up the pie with two or three of the combinations.
“I think people are just curious about the new flavors and want variety,” Yen said.
Large pizzas, serving two to three people, are priced at $18, or $20 for a combo, and mediums, intended for one to two people, are $13, or $15 for a combo. Only medium pies are available in the San Francisco location because of its oven size, Yen said.
“We’re still tweaking and learning as we go, but it’s been a pretty fun journey,” Yen said. “But it’s more about Asian pizza that happens to have a mochi crust.”
The crust started out as gluten-free, but after some customers said they were too chewy, wheat flour has been added.
Next steps might be to license the brand to food halls, as the company has done with Sushirrito, or to explore the consumer packaged goods space, either selling it directly to consumers or in retail.
Sushirrito recently started licensing in Phoenix, and Yen said Mochiko might follow suit.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
