Aldi's New Mochi Bites Are Kind Of Revolting

Welcome back to the Aldi Aisle of Shame column, where Daily Meal's Aldi superfans try out the most attention-grabbing new Find of the week to let you know if it's worth seeking out.

Asian-inspired foods have long captivated shoppers, and those who pay a visit to their neighborhood Aldi are not immune. I've enjoyed its Asian-inspired offerings over the years (though some of its frozen meals aren't worth a second glance), and one of my favorites is the mochi ice cream. This dessert (which is available in cookies and cream, strawberry, and mango flavors) encases a wad of ice cream in a thin, sweet rice coating. So I was excited to see that Aldi was expanding its offerings with a new non-ice cream Find for late July and August: Mochi Bites.

These bites are shelf-stable, individually packaged, and come in two flavor assortments: dessert-inspired (with strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla bites) and tea-inspired (with brown sugar, black sesame, and matcha flavors). Each bite is little over a ½ ounce and is composed of a thick layer of mochi (like, five times what's on the mochi ice cream) and a flavored cream filling. Each bag, which contains 12 bites, costs $3.99. I grabbed both of these assortments to see whether the flavor, texture, and novelty of these treats made them worth the price. 

Fans of Neapolitan ice cream will appreciate that Aldi's dessert-inspired Mochi Bites come in the same three flavors: vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate. These quarter-sized blobs also have the familiar powdery coating that's on the mochi ice cream that I adore. 

I tried the vanilla first, which smelled only vaguely vanilla-adjacent and lacked the freshness of something like a vanilla pound cake. The bite itself was off-putting and felt like eating a ball of vanilla-flavored putty. It's not creamy, and I felt myself missing the ice cream or wishing for something else inside to distract from the mushiness.

The chocolate, meanwhile, had a bit more going on, as it's filled with a brownie batter-like filling. The cream is not as sweet as chocolate fudge frosting, but the texture is almost exactly the same. Although I liked this one much more than the vanilla, the lack of textural diversity still made me feel like I was eating chocolate-flavored Play-Doh.

The strawberry Mochi Bite's aroma perfumed from the packaging the second I opened it. The middle of this treat was filled with a vanilla-like substance that was also similar to store-bought vanilla frosting (which our taster tried and ranked). The strawberry flavor was super artificial — a crushing blow — and the interior was like eating liquid chalk. I wish I had something positive to say about this Aldi Find, but I came up empty.

I knew almost instantly that the tea-inspired flavors would be superior here, as they offer more intrigue than the Neapolitan-inspired balls of Play-Doh (err ... mochi) that I tried prior. I started off with the brown sugar flavor, which smelled vaguely like hazelnuts rather than my expectation of a brown sugar boba tea. It had a creamy, milky undercurrent running through it, which I think is likely due to the paste nestled between the thick layer of sweet rice dough. It was a little overwhelmingly artificial to my palate, but I'd still take it over the vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate mochi. To be honest, it tastes the way Yankee Candle smells — which is kind of revolting when you think about it.

After I tried the brown sugar flavor, I moved on to the matcha. This is a flavor that should be grassy and delicate, and based on the artificial notes of the other mochi, I figured that Aldi would miss the mark entirely. The forest-colored matcha was clearly trying to achieve something green tea-adjacent, but there seemed to be so much matcha cream filling in this bite that it completely overwhelmed my palate. The center was toothpaste-textured, similar to the others. Matcha-flavored toothpaste isn't my cup of tea, so this is one I didn't go back for again.

Last up was the black and white sesame-coated mochi. I appreciated this one the most out of all of them, as the seeds added texture and helped distract from the overwhelming mochi layer. The cream filling here appeared to be black sesame-flavored, and I didn't mind the nutty-savory contrast in the slightest. However, I wouldn't buy a bag of these tea-flavored bites just to get the black sesame ones.