Nam Dae Moon Rice Cake

As if you don't already know, I'm not much of a dessert person.  Now to be clear, it isn't as if I don't enjoy sweets.  In fact, I love to snack on some chocolate and/or gummy bears every now and then.  However, when it comes to a choice between savoury things and sweet things, savoury always wins.  Now if someone else suggests that we head for dessert or even bubble tea, I'm always game.  So when I was invited to try out the new location of Nam Dae Moon Rice Cake on Royal Oak in Burnaby, I happily attended.

Honestly, I never really paid attention to rice cake dessert places and after looking over the menu at NDM, it was a bit overwhelming.  We got to try many things including their new Chocolate Mochi Cake Taco.  These are available in Mid-March, but we had a sneak peek.  So there are 2 options for these, with mochi in the middle or without.  So without them, this ate fluffy and light with mild sweetness.  The cream in the middle was also semi-sweet. 

 

We also sampled the Matcha Mochi Cake Taco with fresh strawberries on top.  Once again, the sponge cake was fluffy and airy.  It was not really sweet at all with only a mild hit of bitterness from the matcha.  There was a bit more flavour from the fresh cream though.  I personally enjoyed having the mochi in the middle as it added a bit of texture to offset the softness of everything else.

Topped with a gigantic blueberry, the Vanilla Mochi Cake Taco was the most neutral-tasting of the bunch (obviously...).  However, I quite enjoyed the simplicity of it since it was like eating strawberry shortcake except with blueberry and a pretzel (for texture I guess?).  Once again, I would opt for the mochi in the middle on all of these.

Now looking at the last one of this series, it was pretty obvious of the flavour.  Of course this was the Chestnut Mochi Cake Taco!  Did the huge chestnut on top give it away???  Now I'm not usually huge fan of chestnut desserts, but this was good because it was essentially fresh cream only in chestnut flavour.  Once again, not too sweet and well I don't mind eating a whole chestnut.  I just don't like Chinese chestnut cakes.

 

So we ended up trying a few other items too including the Red Bean Glutinous Rice Cake, Black Bean Glutinous Rice Cake and the Caramel Lotus Rice Cake.  I know I sound repetitive, but the rice cakes were not sweet and I personally loved that.  Now the ingredients did add some flavour though, especially the caramel and the cookie on top.  Loved the texture of the rice cakes as they were consistent and not overly heavy for a rice cake.

Something different was the Dango with Matcha and also Soy Milk.  Naturally, the soft texture of the mochi was appealing and it was akin to Chinese "tong yeun" without the filling.  I particularly enjoyed the Soy Milk flavour as it almost had a nutritional yeast "cheesy" flavour to it.  The matcha was on the lighter side with only mild hits of bitterness and sweetness.

Lastly, we had once each of the Durian, Mango and Persimmon Mochi.  I didn't get any pictures of the insides, so you'll have to trust me when I say they were stuffed full with only a thin outer layer of soft mochi.  I particularly enjoyed the floral sweetness of the persimmon.  Just sweet enough once again.  That is probably why I enjoyed the rice cakes at Nam Dae Moon.  I'm not a big sweets guy and since these were only mildly sweet, they were right up my alley.  Furthermore, the soft mochi was a textural delight.  I guess I'll have to come back for some more...

*All desserts and beverages were complimentary*

The Good:

- Just sweet enough

- Soft, good quality mochi

- Lots of choice

The Bad:

- Maybe not sweet enough for some?

- Limited seating