Koishii Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in Plymouth

We visited in November 2022 for a dine-in meal.

Having pre booked a table we arrived and received a friendly greeting, shown to a nice table by the window. Table was semi-traditional, quite low and bench style seating.

Menus were brought over and we had a peruse through the vast choices. The drinks menu was also extensive and inexpensive, with a small glass of red wine starting from £3.95. We opted for Japanese Plum wine at £6.95 a glass - small but potent!

Our server returned and took our order. Had to check with the kitchen a couple of times when we had questions about the food.

Complimentary miso soup was brought over which was delicious. We then waited around 15 minutes and 2 portions of gyozas were brought out. However, we had only ordered 1 portion to share but the server had thought we wanted 5 portions of gyozas (5 per portion) - we would have ended up with 25 gyozas! We sent the extras back...

Then another 15 minutes passed and my partner's sushi roll was brought out. Well constructed and delicious I'm told. But I had ordered a katsu curry, and this took a further 20 minutes to arrive. We asked for a tap water and this was taken to another table

Whilst delicious food, the lack of organisation and the meals all coming out with significant delays rather than together was detrimental to the evening.

We received an apology as we paid for 'how hectic' it had been, but there were no more than 5 tables dining (less than a quarter full) so I don't know how they would cope if they were really busy!

To sum up 5 star food but unfortunately a 3...

To start of with this place had been recommended to me by a friend, who said he loved the place and preferred it to that of yo sushi which is in the same area.

From first impressions it was eerily quiet and the appearance seemed almost rundown. After walking in we get welcomed with a sweaty kitchen worker however, she was very pleasant and looked happy to help with anything.

Sitting down, I opened the menu to reveal a catalogue of choices (a lot). Being someone who is new to Japanese cuisine I found this quite overwhelming and would prefer to see less choice with more detail about them, also giving the kitchen staff more time to focus on specialist meals.

Next I was greeted by a kind waiter, who took our order to which I choose their Chicken Katsu Curry (from the lunch menu). He collected our menus with a friendly smile on his face. We then waited around 7 minutes before receiving a Miso Soup.

The food was average. Although the portion sizes were large which was nice to fill my fat belly. The flavor was applicable but I felt it lacked in quality, the chicken being fatty and the miso soup tasting like the breath of my girlfriends old tyme bulldog.

Overall this place had nice staff but was brought down by the lack of quality in the food and...

Overall experiance was ok at best. Ordered the tonkatsu don with egg that came with miso soup along with the tako yaki, tako age, age dashi tofu, yakitori chicken and the chicken gyoyz.

The miso soup came out Luke warm and when we told the wait staff, they just microwaved it instead of giving a fresh hot bowl, so far not a good impression. Next the Age Tako, this tasted like the batter was burnt though surprisingly the octopus was not chewy which is a slight positive. The takoyaki was a mix of Luke warm, hot and cold, things were not impressing at this point.

As you can guess, a good chunk of the sides came cold, though surprisingly the gyoza and age dashi tofu were hot so some good things and some bad.

For the chicken skewers ( yaki tori), this was hot though there was more skin and fat than meat.

For the main course ( tonkatsu don with egg) this was piping hot which was nice though the pork cutlet was over cooked to the point it was tough to chew. Yep things did not end as well as one would have hopped for.

In the end, the wait staff were good and friendly though I can not really recommend tonkatsu don from this experiance.

Your mileage may differ from mine and my mums and because of the overdone pork and lukewarm food, my overall rating...