Mochinut Lakeland — Restaurant in Lakeland

Unbelievable! I’ve never experienced this kind of terrible service in my entire life. Our interaction began with the cashier who was taking our order, not sure if she’s the owner but she has long brown hair, shades on, and was giving orders. My wife began ordering ramen and toppings, including onion, she replies with we don’t have any onion right now it’s been really busy and it will take too long too cut and prepare. SERIOUSLY?! Items listed on the menu should be available. Probably a new concept to these people. They were out of other toppings as well. We proceeded to grab our ramen packets and brought them to them to the hot water/cooking stations they have setup to heat the noodles in your bowl. The previous customers using them had 4 bowls and returned them all because all 3 machines kept on turning off and malfunctioning. I told one of the workers there the outlet couldn’t handle the power load, but they didn’t listen and asked me to try again only for the machines to fail again! We got our refund. Then the cashier had the nerve to lecture us and say “this type of things happen, it’s been really busy here, and YOU have to respect that.” Excuse me? By now my patience is running thin. We waited on our 3 drinks only to watch two other customers—who ordered after us—get theirs first. Blood begins boiling I get up to speak with hair/shades cashier lady, and she has a tv remote in her hand turning the channel to a music station,really? I thought you were busy?! I raised my voice and say excuse me ma’am! When I asked about our drinks, she claimed they had dropped something in the back—a blatant lie. I could see the whole prep area, and no one dropped anything. She just forgot about our drinks! My wife asked her, where’s the 3rd drink? She replied she will make it now. SMH. We get back to the car and my wife and daughters drink (taro) tasted like straight milk. I think we spent 30-45 minutes total for a dry donut and 3 poorly made drinks! What an absolutely horrendous experience. Customer service was completely non existent. Items we ordered were mediocre, sub par, they didn’t even try. Overall This hair/shades lady completely ruined our entire experience today. Whoever runs this place needs to either keep her far away from customers or put her through an extensive customer service training program. How does anyone run a business like this??? When customers come in to order off YOUR menu, the last thing they want to hear is WE DON’T HAVE IT. Get A CLUE PEOPLE!!!...

I've been following Mochinut on Instagram for a while and was out on that end of Lakeland and finally decided to stop in.

The good: The items delivered! The fun vibes of the food matched the images I've seen on Instagram. I shared a potato-fried mozzarella and then my companion and I got Thai tea. We get Thai tea all over the area...we don't have our own boba place locally so if we know we are passing through an area w/ boba we check it out.

The fried potato-mozzarella was great. The sauces were okay, but one had a broken top, so it couldn't be shaken up and had separated. Didn't get to try it.

The less good: The floor was sticky, either from being dirty or from being over-soaped. I assume it was over-soaping, but it still gave that feeling of like "ick" that you get when you can hear your own sticky feet following you around. The bathroom had napkins instead of paper towels so they just kind of dissolved. I wanted to wash my hands before eating.

The boba was grainy. Some of the boba was overly soft, while some was quite hard and not particularly cooked well. And there was a general feeling of either grit from the tea powder or maybe dissolved boba. Whatever it was, it left the drink tasting a little gross. Also the tea was too sweet. I know it's made from a powder mix - so maybe it was just the wrong ratio or I didn't let the ice water it down first which might have helped.

And I don't want this to come off wrong, but the restaurant kind of...smelled weird. It was a wet dog smell? Which could have been anything. We couldn't quite pinpoint it - we smelled each other, we surreptitiously sniffed our cups...it may have been coming from the floor or something. It was a hot day, maybe it was a smell that just hung around b/c of other customers. I don't want to count this against it...but generally it's hard to enjoy food when there's a funk in the air.

In total - I wouldn't suggest a trip out just for this, but if you are already in the area, it's got the instagrammable/tiktokky vibes the youths love. It has a lot of unique items to try. The cooked items we got were good. I didn't...

Not a great first experience. I see many reviews from a week ago stating that the air conditioner wasn’t working, and I can confirm that today it was still not working either. There were only 2 small table top fans, that did absolutely nothing unless you were standing directly in front of one of them (not possible either). It was very hot, no air circulation in the place; I feel bad for the workers in the hot kitchen with no a/c. Considering how long it took this place to open up you would think they had plenty of time to make sure everything was ready to go. The employees didn’t look thrilled to be there either, which is always pleasant as a customer..

The donuts themselves were presented nicely but personally (this was my first time trying mochi donuts) I did not care for them. The texture is very chewy and the donut in general is very heavy. Not a light fluffy donut (again that’s just the type of donut, not anything that was wrong with it. If you’ve never had one before, don’t expect the same type of dough or texture as a typical donut). I ordered 6 of the donuts and they all tasted the same. The topping is very minimal in adding anything to the flavor (the churro and the chocolate funnel one both tasted exactly the same. The churro one had zero cinnamon flavor at all. The strawberry had a tiny hint of strawberry from the sauce drizzle but other than that also tasted identical to the others.) not worth nearly $17 for 6 of them.

I would consider trying them again in a few months to see if they have their kinks worked out to try a boba drink, but...