Guests can find the Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen for the Festival of the Holidays in the Japan Pavilion at Epcot’s World Showcase area. The Sweet Potato Mochi Cake is a new item at the Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen this year. What did we think of it?

Traditionally, the most common Japanese ideas of the holiday season do not match the “Western” ideas. However, one should not think that keeps the Japanese tradition from offering quality holiday cuisine.

The Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen offers three food items for the Epcot International Festival of the Holidays. They include:

• Sushi Tree: Sushi roll with krab meat and cream cheese topped with Aonori seaweed, Ikura salmon roe, and spicy mayonnaise – $7.50
• New Year Celebration Soba: Buckwheat soba noodles in a hot dashi soup with yuzu, shrimp tempura, and chopped green onion – $8.50
• Sweet Potato Mochi Cake: Gooey sweet potato mochi cake with purple sweet potato cream, strawberry, black sugary syrup, and sesame seeds – $6.50.

In the past, we have enjoyed the Sushi Tree at the Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen. However, for our recent trip to Festival of the Holidays, we focused on the new items. That meant trying the Sweet Potato Mochi Cake.

Sweet Potato Mochi Cake at Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen

This year’s new item at this booth, the Sweet Potato Mochi Cake, sounded interesting. This mochi cake contains a wide variety of flavors. Would these flavors work well? Would they be appealing to a theme park audience? How much like an authentic Japanese dish would it be? Would we even be able to tell as people living most of our lives in the United States of America?

Well, we know this was marketed as a traditional-style Japanese dessert.  We had our doubts about that after trying it. Admittedly, we would not qualify as experts in Japanese cuisine, though.

Despite those misgivings, we found the mochi cake lacked flavor. We expected an understated dessert compared to more decadent options at the Festival of the Holidays. Still, this brought less positive flavor than anticipated. Also, we would have preferred more strawberry flavor with this cake.

Some people in our group felt the texture failed to measure up. However, others thought the texture reflected an “Americanized” Asian dessert.

Though this sweet treat did not blow us away, the presentation qualifies as excellent. The varied bright colors make this treat look wonderful.

In our opinion, we would skip this treat at the Shi Wasu Holiday Kitchen. We would venture over to the Holiday Hearth Dessert location to satisfy our sweet tooth.  Once again, thanks to GooToYou for their help. As always, eat like you mean it!