Koh Grill & Sushi Bar

Good sushi and sashimi and some grilled dishes as well, it’s inside the food court hence no ambiance. For a quick meal provided that you can get a table quickly it could be a good choice.

Located at the fourth level of the shopping Centre, it is mostly food court with a few mini restaurants. One of the restaurants is this Japanese restaurant which is well known for its Shiok Maki. In fact there is 2 versions — first generation and second generation.
I was showed to a counter seat. The restaurant was quickly packed by 12noon. Iced water was not served free of charge. The hot green tea was served free flow, chargeable at $ 1.50+. If one wanted water, one would be asked to order mineral water. The restaurant served bento sets during the day, before dinner time.
Bento H ($ 12.90+)
Sushi moriawase, mini Tokyo ramen
The broth of the ramen tasted more like the KopiTiam version of pork rib prawn noodle soup than the usual Ramen’s soup base. The ramen egg did not lava type of yolk. The cha Siew was kind of dry. Kind of disappointing. The sushi was not bad except for the tako sushi which I felt was a bit too chewy.
SHIOK!!! Maki ($ 16.80+)
Heavenly combination of charcoal grilled eel wrapped with lightly roasted salmon.
It looked great with the touched sauce and flying fish roe on top of the maki. Although it tasted rich and buttery with the melt in the mouth salmon, crunchy roe, it wasn’t as Shiok as I thought it to be as the eel was quite bony for some parts and giving irritation down the throat.
Overall food was not bad. Service could be improved. Waited awhile for the sushi which was part of the bento set to arrive. Almost finished the maki and ramen before it finally came. Take note that there GST in the bill. Credit cards are accepted here.

Great sushi, one of the places where you can get fresh sushi and sashimi every single time. On some days they have specials, which are not on the menu. Be sure to ask the servers for the specials. You have to try the shiok maki, which is a unagi and salmon California roll. Smothered with an amazing sauce. Another must try would be there Pi Dan maki. It’s maki, covered with a thick century egg sauce. It’s a must try! There will definitely be a queue, but persevere! You will be rewarded greatly with a good meal! And for people who enjoy green tea with abit of sugar, they have sweetened green tea, and it does taste really delicious. Go on, if you’re around orchard road one day, and you’re hungry, go ahead and satisfy your desires with these great recommendations!

Love love love the Shiok Maki. But let me warn you. Due to a thick sauce that Shiok Maki, ordering 1 portion of it will be more than enough for 1 person. It will make you full. Reasonably priced

Koh Grill & Sushi Bar should just stick to what it’s good at and stop with offering up the grilled items. If you’re dining there, don’t bother with the yakitori. Tori-​Q tastes better.
Managed to get there for a late Sunday lunch meaning there wasn’t really a queue, though the place was packed. The sushi and rolls aren’t bad, with the marinated shiro-​maguro a big big personal favourite, the ‘fancy’ rolls were… interesting, though I’m not sure I’d go back for them.
You really do have to like these modern sushi roll things with all sorts of interesting ingredients to like this place, and unfortunately I don’t.
Overall, it was decent. Most of the food (EXCEPT THE GRILLED ITEMS) were of good, solid and strong flavours. I can see why some people love it.

Located in the food court of Wisma Atria on level 4 is this unique Koh Grill & Sushi bar. Famed for it’s «Shiok Maki» and reasonably priced sushi is the main reason why there’s always a long queue. They do take reservations though, which is the solution to skip the queue, so plan ahead!
1. Shiok Maki $ 16.80+
I love the little eggs on the maki and they are generous with the eggs. The sauce isn’t just drizzled over the maki, it drowns the maki in a sweet and thick sauce, which helps the eggs stick onto the salmon. The slightly burnt salmon adds a slight «burnt» taste to the maki. Personally, I enjoy a charcoal-​rich diet so this is the right taste for me. For some, it may seem strange
2. Shiok Maki Gen 2 $ 16.80+
The main difference between Gen 2 and the original Shiok Maki is the prawn. Both sushi are wrapped in slightly char grilled salmon. The eel is slightly sweeter and hence, it is usually the more popular choice.
3. Ebi Tempura $ 10
You get 4 big prawns in a thick tempura batter, served with the tempura sauce. The prawns were crispy, even after turning cold, they were still just as crispy. I enjoyed the tempuras.
4. Enoki Buta Maki $ 3+
The sauce on this is what makes it so awesome. Literally a sugar overdose sauce is drizzled over the enoki which had been barbecued. This is also one of their popular choices, which has been highly recommended by Koh. Sadly however, I find it pretty normal. Yes it’s good, but it’s not fantastic
5. Yaki Udon $ 10+
I loved this yaki udon, a lot of egg and chicken. It tasted just like the yaki udon I ate in Japan. The sauce that the udon was cooked with was slightly sour which is compensated by the egg, which is slightly sweet. The udon was chewy and reasonably soft to enjoy.
6. Seafood Chaahan (Fried Rice) $ 10+
The «wok-​hei» in this dish was overwhelming. I could smell this dish, before the waitress even served it to us. There were 5 big fresh prawns served in this dish, and the fried rice tasted heavily of garlic. So beware if you are planning to meet your date after this meal.
7. Salmon Sashimi $ 8+
You get 5 thick slices of salmon sashimi. It was fresh and it melted in my mouth! Mouth-​watering goodness!
Koh Grill & Sushi bar doesn’t charge the 10% Service charge, even though there is actually really good service. But they do charge 7% GST on top of their prices listed in the menu.
I really liked the Shiok Maki, which I will definitely be back for more!

I wandered in after almost 5 years and could not believe that the sushi chef not only remembered me but what my normal order used to be. The sushi and sashimi is great here and they also have hot dishes. Service is great with the only downside being that if you go during the rush you will have quite a line.

This is the best value for money sushi place. Don’t come here so that I can have more for myself :)

Absolutely gutted to be honest. Read that standard had dropped so decided to try again… Everything was fine in March this year, however, when I returned last Thursday, 13 nov 2014, Koh Grolled embarrassed me in front of my colleagues who swore never to return again. I was disappointed, I used to like this place heaps.
We ordered amongst others, salmon carpaccio and the famous maki. When the salmon carpaccio arrived, wat looked like left overs from salmon sashimi were dumped in to make the numbers. Salmon carpaccio cannot be 1.5cm thick…
The maki didn’t arrive so I reminded the waitress. She claimed that there is a long queue for maki so we have to wait. But we ordered pretty early on so I suspected the maki was prepared and left to cool. The maki finally arrived and was cold, very very cold. I questioned the waitress and she said it’s meant to be like that. I have bred eating japanese food since they were swimming in their father’s balls. Don’t tell me it’s like that.
The chef came over personally to explain that because the cucumber and the seaweed was cool hence the maki will be cold? Excuse me, swimming in ur father’s balls!!!
Gave up and cancelled the 2^nd maki order. Went to pay and the cashier was very very rude…
How to return when the waitresses and chef treated u like u were born yesterday and they don’t feel like that are eager for ur biz?
I advice all never to return…

Had lunch here a couple weeks ago. One of the reasons was their famous Shiok sushi. All quite nice and fresh ingredients, but the sauces poured on (cheesy, mayo) — cover the delicate fish taste. Quite rich, their dishes and sushi fill you up, but I prefer more purist places. Also are their puffer fish and survived :) so obviously was well cooked :)

The only reason for me to dine there again is the Shiok sushi. It really lives up to its name. It is shiok to the max. I would probably just skip the others and only order this.
I still cannot describe what is in it except it is creamy but not overly so. The explosion of flavor and taste is sublime and enough to make me want more.
I also tried the lunch set bento A which is decent priced with grilled saba, salmon sashimi and tempura plus miso soup and a slice of watermelon. A good start to try a bit of everything. The salmon sashimi has a generous thick cut which is nice.
I added an order of asparagus wrapped in pork belly yakitori. That was decent but after my experience at Nanbantei, it paled in comparison.
It is always crowded during lunch so there must be something which is good in the menu. I just need to explore more, but in the mean time, just give me shiok sushi, and all the avocado in there.

I’ve read so much about this place from food bloggers’ blogs and so I decided to give this place a try with my friends.
Be prepared to wait in line for at least 30 minutes as the restaurant is pretty small and very popular.
Their famous shiok maki now has a version 2 (with shrimp). We ordered both versions, and I preferred the first version better. Nonetheless, both are shiok indeed.
The pitan tofu was very yummy, but the portion was surprisingly small relative to the picture in the menu. You can probably finish it in 1 – 2 mouthfuls.
The gyoza was okay.
We also ordered the shabu pork with ramen to share among 4 people. The portion was decent, the pork was fresh and the soup tasty.
The overall experience was fairly decent despite the long wait but not good enough for me to crave for it.

I was here during lunch.
First, the service was bad and slow. I was a lone diner, so I knew I could sit at the empty counter seats though there were two groups of people in front of me. It took SO MUCH effort to capture the staff’s attention. And even after going through the frustration of waving hard and all the ‘excuse me’s, they rather attend to those who are seated than to at least check what I wanted. Thankfully I was in a good mood, so I waited for a good 10 minutes before they finally bother to attend to me and ushered me to the counter seat (see, I knew I would be given a counter seat and they actually made me wait soooooooooo long).
Regarding the food, it was a BIG LET DOWN. Since the name of the shop is ‘Koh Grill & Sushi Bar’ (note: GRILL came first), I thought perhaps it would be smarter/​safer to order some grilled food, after all it’s my first visit. The wait for the food was really long. Then they came to told me that they ran out of this, ran out of that. Can I replace you with this, can I replace you with that. Well fine, anything arrangement would be okay, as long as you serve me the food quick.
Then to my horror, as I watch the chef prepare the grilled food infront of me, I got really shocked and upset with his ‘hygiene’. He was preparing the raw meat that needs to be grilled, and also handled the raw salad vegetables. He DID NOT WASH HIS HANDS in between!!! With that same pair of dirty hands, he also held the wooden skewers while grilling the meat over charcoal.
Still, I thought I should believe in the better good, and gave the food a chance (without eating the salad). But, it’s another wave of disappointment. The meat was overcooked and tough. The garlic fried rice served with the grilled meat lacked fragrance and just tasted oily.
Guess what’s the best dish on my tray? Miso soup.
But come on, this is not what I came here for because I can easily whip that up at home in less than 5 minutes!
It’d probably take me at least a decade to shake off this bad experience. I would give zero star for this if I could.

Warning: the service here is pretty appalling.
Warning 2: you’re bound to be stuck in a long queue during lunch hour.
Warning 3: if you’re here for the popular salmon or eel rolls (or any sushi roll for that matter), be prepared to wait at least 30 mins. And they don’t even taste that great if you ask me.
What I do like about this place, is you have an option between sweetened and unsweetened green tea.

There are so many things wrong with this eatery (it is definitely not a restaurant by any stretch of the word), but I’ll list just 5.
1) The sashimi is not fresh.
2) The sushi rice is terrible. It is dry and tasteless.
3) No wasabi was provided with the sushi.
4) The pickled ginger tastes like it’s been soaked in sugar syrup.
5) The grilled beef was way overcooked and dry.
The list above just touched on the quality of the food, which was pretty dire. Seriously, the food at Yoshinoya tastes better. Now for the rest.
Koh Grill is set in the Wisma food court. However, you will definitely get more space if you ate at the food court. Diners are cramped together. As a sign of how they have packed customers together, the waitress had to reach across the table next to us just to pass us our food. There was no space for her to even get to our table.
Service was poor too. Waiting time for our food was decent, save for the shiok maki which took half an hour to arrive. Speaking of the shiok maki, that was the one food item that tasted decent. Presentation wise, the maki was unevenly sliced but compared to the rest of the food, this otherwise ordinary dish stood out.
In a nutshell, eat here if you want sub-​food court standard food at higher than food court prices. I wouldn’t bother.

Sighhhhh. This is one of those places I really want to like but 2 strikes and I’m out. Yes, my experiences were that frustrating that I won’t even wait for 3.
The primary reason I liked Koh grill was that they do affordable, fresh California-​style sushi. I like the Shiok maki 2.0, I generally skip the Pitan because it’s a little too much stuff and the aburi/​other rolls on the menu are all pretty delicious.
So what’s not to like? I’ll start with the mild, forgivable aspects. The sushi itself is delicious in your mouth but the presentation can be pretty sloppy. I’m not overly picky about my food when it’s $ 10 – 12 but we’ve had rolls that had fallen apart when presented and mayo slopping off. Not a big deal but just don’t expect any Japanese meticulousness. The tempura items are also drenched in oil, so in my book that’s a fry-​up, not tempura.
The worse thing about my two visits to Koh grill has got to be the service. This IS a grill located in a food court, so I guess the mantra to go by is hawker price, hawker service.
On my first visit, I asked for cold tap water and was told they didn’t serve it, even though the waitresses were drinking water out of a flask like 5m away. They couldn’t explain why I had to buy bottled water and so I calmly told the waitress I’ll pay bottled water prices for tap water and she acquiesced. Mind you I’m leaving out descriptions of a lot of black faces and somewhat admonishing tones I got during this exchange. That visit was topped off by the grill forgetting our order of a cod teriyaki. I’m fine if a restaurant forgets an order but I expect to be informed about the mistake and given a time estimate. Instead we were made to wait another 25 minutes and I decided to leave (we sat down at 12.30pm and left close to 2.45pm). On our second visit, my partner and I basically encountered the same drama regarding water and the situation was ridiculous enough that we overheard the tourists sharing our table asking each other what’s the big deal with water because they too had tried to ask for it.
*headdesk*
Bottom line, you’re getting a price point between a high end food court and a no-frill’s restaurant for good California-​style sushi that caters to the non-​Japanese taste bud, average quality for the other food items and imagine all the servers are your bossy 3^rd aunties that you’ve to see at Chinese New Year and be polite because you know better than to kick up a fuss with them. I for one am choosing to take my dollar back to my old haunts diagonally down the street.

Great food, awesome prices. Their bento box sets come at around 10 – 15 bucks and you can expect quality content, from the sashimi to the teriyaki chicken, to the grilled saba fish. The only downside to a place as value for money as this is that everyone else wants to eat here too so it gets pretty crowded, especially on weekends. Forget dinner if you can’t be bothered to queues and hop over here during lunch instead

Award winning Japanese food in a foodcourt setting. Here you go– Koh Grill and Sushi.
Shiok Maki (S$ 16.80) — Each piece of maki was creamy, moist and full of flavors. Unagi and avocado wrapped in a seaweed roll, covered with a gratinated Aburi Salmon with a Mayonnaise/​Hollandaise? sauce and topped with flying fish roe. All my favorite ingredients in 1 maki. I foresee myself eating this every time i have a sushi craving.
The Swordfish and Tuna Carpaccio (S$ 18) was very refreshing. It had a strong citrus taste which makes this a very good appetizer. Sesame oil, maybe yuzu as well and garlic were used in this one. The ingredients are flown in from Japan, Norway, Australia and Canada to ensure fresh food anytime of the year. The affable Chef Patrick often offers special creations so do look out for them.

A friend who lived in Japan for a few years recommended Koh to me; this is my little Orchard Road food secret (ok, not any more).
Tip number one: if Patrick is not behind the counter, go eat somewhere else. The food will still be good, but it will not be awesome.
Tip number two: sit at the counter, if you can. I find watching the slice-​wipe-​slice-​wipe motions and the economy of his movement to be addictive.
Tip number three: since you’re already at the counter, ask Patrick for omakase (ie, smile and just ask him to feed you) and watch him bring out all sorts of interesting things for you (at my last trip, the scallop-​and-​foie gras sushi was moan-​inducing. ZOMG)
Only thing to note is that Patrick’s very fond of aburi-​ing (blow-​torching), and mayonnaise, possibly because some people don’t like raw-​raw fish. You can tell him what you like, and depending on what’s good and what’s in season, you can put together a most excellent meal for not very much dough.

Orchard Road is popular but the dining choices there can be so dire. If you’re feeling like a proper meal — i.e. not a snack, takeaway, chain restaurant or bland expensive place with no character — the Orchard area can be quite depressing.
Thankfully there’s a great little spot for very good and very affordable Japanese food. Of all places to be in, it’s in the food court (Food Republic) in Wisma Atria). I can’t say it’s a best kept secret in any way: the queues speak for themselves. But you will queue less than elsewhere, pay less, and have better food.
Everything is quite good to above average here. The shiok maki is one of their house specials: the ‘shiok first generation’ is with eel, which is still my favourite; the ‘second generation’ comes with prawns. The eel is better. The grilled fish dishes are quite good. The yakimono isn’t one of their strong points but it’s okay.
It’s not going to change your world or blow your mind but at these prices? Way better than going to some of the more popular Japanese lower-​mid-​range places if you ask me!