Japan’s 2018 Mochi Summit (第7回全国ご当地もちサミット) combined my love of cooking showdowns with eating said foods. A two-day event in the city of Ichinoseki of Southern Iwate Prefecture, it welcomed hundreds of visitors to judge the mochi-making skills of 26 competitors.
Honey and I were first made aware of this event through a flyer in the mail. Once I saw the words mochi (もち) and eating, I knew we had to go. For those who aren’t familiar with mochi, it’s a Japanese glutinous cake made by pounding rice into paste, then shaping. Outside of Japan, you’re likely to find it as a sweet confection, such as mochi ice cream (a Japanese-American invention) or daifuku.
Voting area
But within the country mochi takes on many forms, both sweet and savoury, fresh and packaged into rectangular blocks. It’s eaten for celebratory reasons around the New Year and other special events, or regularly as well. Basically, mochi has been around for a long time. That’s why the Mochi Summit called upon the country’s residents to declare a mochi master.
After a two and a half hours drive, Honey and I arrived in Ichinoseki and took an event shuttle to the location. It was raining on and off throughout the day, but that didn’t stop us and many others from attending.
It was only a couple of hours into the event, but already we could see which vendors were the most popular based on the long lines before them. Of the 26 stalls, there was a good mixture of snack, meal, and dessert options, as well as a number of traditional and modern foods.
Honey and I busted out our event map, which was handed to us on the bus ride over. We quickly scanned over each vendor description to decide on our first meal.
Rain-speckled vendor information
Each food item was priced at ¥400 a piece, so we carefully weighed out our options based on how much we wanted to try a certain food, with how worth it it was for the price. With each purchase, the vendor hands you a small card for writing some information about your background (where you’re from, age, first-timer, etc.) to later use as a voting ticket.
We settled on two items to break in our Summit experience: menchi-katsu (メンチカツ) the maker called sandwich katsu (サンドカツ) and nikuman (肉まん).
Menchi-katsu is basically a fried cutlet using panko breadcrumbs, but uses ground pork or beef instead. Nikuman is a pork and vegetable bun of Chinese origins, something I grew up eating and still love today.
Both contained pockets full of chewy, softened mochi and complimented the actual food dish itself. But while the nikuman was overall average in taste compared to regular buns, the menchi-katsu was really something to write home about.
Delicious mochi inside katsu (sorry for the focus)
Many others must have thought so too, because as we headed to the far end of the lot for this stall, a huge line awaited us. So far, this katsu was at the top of our list.
Next up, we sought out something to warm us up on this cold day. That’s how we landed on mochi ten zoni (もち天ぞう煮). Zoni itself is a Japanese soup with mochi, commonly eaten for New Years, and was said to have been a staple for samurai on the battlefield.
The broth was incredibly flavourful, and was accompanied by shimeji mushrooms and tempura mochi. Needless to say, we polished it off quickly.
With our stomachs satiated for now, we got our hands on some dessert. Having eaten some traditional foods, we decided to try something more modern: an egg pudding-filled mochi topped with Mont Blanc.
I’m a huge fan of egg pudding or egg custard, which is similar to but creamier than flan. Combine that with Mont Blanc, a dessert of French origins using puréed chestnuts, it sounded like the perfect Autumn treat.
While the layers were beautiful, I found that the egg pudding was too firm for my liking. Overall the dessert was difficult to eat from the cupcake tin, but the flavours melded nicely after it thawed out a bit.
After this little snack, we walked around the lot some more to get a look at what others were selling. As it turns out, there was actually three or four more food festival events that day, in the adjoining lots. We explored the nearby area a little before heading back to the Mochi Summit, since coming all the way to Ichinoseki is a rare thing.
Before leaving the event, we stopped for a couple more quick bites to eat and get in our final votes.
Honey had his eye on the jumbo fried bacon throughout the afternoon, as did many other patrons. To my surprise, it was actually rather tasty. Instead of one thick slice of bacon, the filling was made up of cut up bacon and of course, gooey, delicious mochi.
To end our mochi-filled day, we stopped at the first booth for a ‘moffle’, or mochi-waffle, the winners of last year’s Summit. The ‘moffle’ was made up of grilled mochi topped with a savoury soy syrup, kinako soy powder, and vanilla ice cream.
It was a creative way to combine traditional Japanese flavours with a European twist. However, despite the delightful mochi-pull from this dessert, the texture was a little too tough and the flavours were much too sweet for Honey and me.
At the end of the day, the mochi katsu still reigned supreme for us. With the Summit results now available online, we had to see how it faired in this mochi showdown. To our surprise, they didn’t even place! But it was good to see that the zoni warmed not only our bodies and hearts, but others as well, winning 2nd place.
If you’re in Northern Honshu around this time next year, definitely don’t miss out on a taste of the Mochi Summit and cast in your votes. The mochi world depends on it.
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-Waifu ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
Because I'm Waifu 