Koya in Wilmette — Restaurant in New Trier Township

I was pleasantly surprised! We ordered create your own bowls and both selected the salmon option and they were delicious. Their oshinko is shredded which was different but kind of neat how it balanced out the flavor in the bowl.

Pros: bowls are delicious, I would order again I'm happy the bowls are compostable

Cons: the standard create your own bowl is pretty slim for the price, I added a couple extra toppings

the milk tea was okay, they're very sweet. I ordered the brown sugar milk tea and ordered less sweet to balance out the brown sugar but it was still too sweet. And the strawberry milk tea just tasted like a milk shake and while it tasted good - there wasn't any tea flavor, so that was...

We have a favorite japanese restaurant in Winnetka but wanted to try Koya so as to try somewhere 'new'...it was a definite fail ....the seafood udon had no real udon noodles and tasted and smelled awful!----the chicken teriyaki and tempura did not live up to our expectation either....super oily tempura and chicken did not taste fresh. The salad was fresh but ginger dressing tasted off...the edamame and red dragon sushi were the only good items we had from our entire order. The waitress collecting the huge bowl of untouched seafood udon, asked if we wanted to take it home? we explained that we did not care for it and her only response or resolution was...

Koya is Wilmette's hidden Japanese gem. It is infinitely superior to the far more popular Akai Hana in oh so many ways. We always just went to Akai until we discovered this place in downtown Wilmette. My personal favorite is the Salmon Teriyaki. Always perfectly cooked with fabulous Teri. My wife loves the sushi and the boys are partial to Teriyaki. I even think their miso tastes better.

It's so good which is why it's always confusing to me that, unlike Akai, you rarely have to wait here. In short, if you haven't tried this place but like Japanese, do yourself a favor and...