Every mochi order leaves the counter with a small plastic dropper tucked in the box. People turn it over and ask what it is for. It is a pipette of flavor, and it is meant to be emptied.
The shape is the one condensed milk comes in, a soft tube with a narrow tip. Ours are filled with a sauce we pick for the flavor sitting next to it: strawberry yuzu, sesame oil, peach condensed milk, mango milk, banana milk. A mochi piece is two or three bites, so the sauce has to end up inside the piece rather than running down the outside. That is what the narrow tip is for.
Bite the piece first, then squeeze into the opening. Doing it in the other order sends most of it onto your hand. On soft serve it goes over the top, all at once, before the swirl starts to soften.
The pairings run in two directions. Some push the flavor further along the line it is already on: sesame oil on the black sesame, mango milk on the mango, peach condensed milk on the peach oolong. Others cut across. Matcha and lychee both come with strawberry yuzu, which is bright and acidic against a flavor that is grassy in the first case and floral in the second.
Some pairings bring something solid as well, and that is doing a different job. Mango comes with natadecoco, the chewy coconut jelly, cut into small cubes. The Banana Milk mochi comes with sliced strawberries, and the Banana Milk soft serve comes with coarse sugar. Our mochi is soft and the ice cream is soft, so anything with an edge on it changes the whole bite.
Not everything in the case carries one. The daifuku do not: ichigo daifuku is a strawberry inside sweet bean paste inside mochi, and there is nothing to add to it. And there is no boba on anything we sell at the moment. It went out with Thai Tea when that flavor left the rotation. The brown sugar and boba pairing people still ask about belonged to Milk Tea, which is in the archive.
The pipette is included. It comes with the piece at $7.50 for mochi and $6.50 for soft serve, and the price is the same whether you use it or carry it home in the box. Use the whole pipette.