The East Village café known for its handcrafted mochi introduces a rotating series of limited-edition flavors, starting with a Strawberry Cookie Butter Mochi made with fresh New York strawberries
NEW YORK — Since opening on Avenue B in the spring of 2025, Pavlo Mochi has quietly become one of the East Village’s most talked-about dessert destinations. It’s a shop where handcrafted mochi, made fresh daily, sells out before the afternoon. This June, the café is adding a new dimension to its offerings with the launch of Mochi of the Month: a rotating series of limited-edition flavors, each available for one month only.
The inaugural release is the Pride Month Strawberry Cookie Butter Mochi — creamy strawberry mousse made with fresh strawberry purée and freeze-dried strawberry pieces, a Biscoff® butter center, coated in white chocolate, and finished with rainbow chocolate splashes.
The flavor has a history. It was one of the very first mochi developed when the café opened, and quickly became a team and crowd favorite. But founder Pavlo Servetnyk held it back, knowing strawberry mochi is only worth making when the fruit is genuinely in season. Now, with fragrant strawberries arriving from New York farms, it’s returning for June in a new Pride Month design.
Mochi-centric cafés remain rare in New York City. Despite the city’s appetite for global food culture, only a handful of shops focus primarily on mochi, and fewer still make it fresh in-house daily. That scarcity makes Pavlo Mochi’s presence in the East Village notable for both locals who have already built it into their weekly routine and for visitors who travel specifically for the experience.
Pavlo Mochi occupies a singular space in New York’s dessert landscape. Servetnyk is a MasterChef Ukraine winner who spent years training in some of the world’s most demanding kitchens, including Osteria Francescana in Modena, Chef Massimo Bottura’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, and Gaggan Anand in Bangkok. Before the war in Ukraine forced him to leave, he owned and operated a restaurant, pizzeria, and bakery in Kherson. He came to New York and built something entirely his own: a mochi that bears no resemblance to the frozen, mass-produced variety most Americans know.
“New York is a city that teaches you to be yourself without apology. As immigrants, we know what it means to find a place that actually sees you,” said Pavlo Mochi Founder Pavlo Servetnyk. “Pride Month is one of those moments when this city is at its most alive, and we wanted to honor that in our own way, something joyful and made with love. The Pride Month Mochi is dedicated to everyone who helps make this city more generous and human.
With the Mochi of the Month program, Pavlo Mochi will announce each new limited-edition flavor in advance, giving guests a preview of what’s coming before it arrives. Each selection is developed entirely in-house, with Pavlo and the team designing every aspect of the flavor, the filling, and the visual presentation. No two monthly releases will look or taste alike.
The Pride Month Strawberry Cookie Butter Mochi is available throughout June at Pavlo Mochi’s café at 199 Avenue B (between 12th and 13th Streets) in Manhattan’s East Village, and for pickup and delivery via DoorDash and Uber Eats.
For more information, please visit the official website and Instagram page.
