Koji Osakaya Japanese Restaurant

This is my top 5 favorite restaurant! I love their Ramen and Donburi! And their quality of sushi/​sashimi is always good! Price is quite expensive compared to regular sushi train restaurant, but compared to other a-​la-​kart restaurant, it’s not much different! Want to visit there soon!!!

Love this tiny place! It’s kind of hard to find but its great!
I enjoy getting the ramen when I visit.

The best rice in any restraunt. Any meal is very true to being a Japanese meal. I go there as much as I can.

My coworkers and I were in Portland for a regional meeting. We browsed the city, and were looking for a good place to eat sushi. We stopped in Upper Playground and asked the cashier for suggestions on sushi. She made a recommendation, but then said they were closed, and provided another location… Koji Osakaya!
I am so glad she did! We absolutely would not have been able to spot out this location on our own. The food absolutely hit the spot and was exactly what we were craving. The prices were great too!
I ordered the plain ramen and an Oregon roll. The food came out quick and tasted fresh. The waitress was also super sweet and very attentive.
The entire time we were there people were coming in to pick up their order. (nice sign of a consistently great place) If I lived here, I would definitely be back!

Terrible noodles. Tastes like it was boiled and put on a plate. Servers were nice I suppose.

Been here quite a few times. I am a little disappointed that their «specials» menu has been the same every time I have came in — besides today when there was an added menu with rolls that had pumpkin in them which sounds absolutely horrendous to me!
I love the food here. It’s fresh & not that expensive for what you get. Although today I felt like a $ 16 Guacto Poki Dragon roll was a little ridiculous.
Their chicken yakisoba is delicious & cheap for what you get. Also, the Vegas roll — you can’t go wrong! It’s melt in your mouth delicious!
The reason for the 3 stars is because today while eating lunch we had to ask about 6 different times for more water. Also, our waitress left in the middle of taking care of us & didn’t let us know she was leaving.
The other main complaint I have is that both my friend & myself felt sick after eating there today — gurgley stomachs & all that comes with that. Couldn’t have been anything other than some bad fish. Delicious eating it, but the after effects are definitely not worth our $ 55 bill!!!

Wish them the best. They need to work on details. Quality, Presentation, service and atmosphere at realistically a 2.5. Rooting for you guys.

Very slow service. The food is pretty good, and they have a lot of options. The bagel roll makes me laugh, but it’s tasty.

Yesterday was the fourth time I’ve been here and I literally have nothing but praise for this place. The staff is incredibly friendly and helpful. The food is amazing and so so delicious but it does take a while and it also depends on how full the place is.
The first time I went here, I got the lunch special with the tempura and teriyaki chicken. It was very good. The last three times I’ve gotten the Tori Teriyaki Donburi. It is literally, heaven on earth. The chicken is so good, and I love the shredded egg and nori and I usually don’t like seaweed. The bowl is pretty big and fills me up. The other thing I’ve had here was the California roll, which is a pretty basic roll and nothing special. I’ve also tried their jalapeño poppers (?), fried jalapeño with tuna and cheese inside I think. The spiciest thing I’ve ever had! My mom and I were crying but didn’t stop eating them, they were that good!
I’ll definitely try to come back before I leave for college this year!

So I thought I would give sushi in Portland another try, so far, two strikes. I did not like this place either, sad face. So here are a few things I noticed.
1: It was kind of expensive. The simple rolls were pretty cheap but the «crazier» rolls, really didn’t have that much in them and were more than places back home. Maybe Portland raises their sushi prices because they’re not next to an ocean? I don’t know.
2: The place was packed! So I thought it would be good, but eh.
3: Great service. Really really great service. Very nice people, fast, and efficient.
4: If you like tuna like I do (spicy tuna especially) I could only find 3 rolls with tuna; tuna roll, spicy tuna roll, and tempura tuna roll.
5: I wonder if their noodles are good, I wanted to try some but wanted sushi a lot more
ALSO I ordered a spicy tuna roll with some other stuff, and it was NOT spicy at all. I think they just gave me a regular tuna roll, sad face.

Don’t forget the miso and ocha (green tea)
Gioza very good starter
Chicken dombori also superb

Not very many vegan or vegetarian options, however the staff is very accommodating. The atmosphere is phenomenal. Very organized, and smells delicious. I got a vegetarian roll with tofu, and it was great! I recommend it if you have an afternoon free.

I ordered steakkatsu bendo to go, it totally over-​cooked and hard to chew!!! Very disappointed. Never ever order this dish again — it cost $ 28!!!

I’ve been here twice. The first time I came in, the food was alright, but was overpriced for the quality.
The second time I came in was just two days ago. I ordered a caterpillar roll and katsu donburi.
The servers were very polite, and very attentive, which is the only reason this place deserves one star.
The caterpillar roll. just​.no. It was so soggy, and very very warm. It tasted so strange, but it was the only edible part of my meal.
The donburi. It was disgusting. While understandably the egg made it a bit spongy, I took one bite of the katsu and it tasted like I bit into a sponge full of water. There was no flavor. It literally tasted like dirty dish water. The pork was extremely dry on the inside, I don’t know how that was even possible. So, I took one bite of the donburi and left the rest.
When the server came by I told her about the donburi. I didn’t tell her that the caterpillar roll was gross too, because I ate most of it and I wanted to pay for it.
So, I told her about the donburi and how I only took one bite, told her about the awful taste, the fact that it was pretty much a watery sponge, etc. She was very apologetic and said she would talk to her manager. She came back and told me that the manager would only discount 25% of the donburi. 25%? I didn’t even eat it. So I told her no, I don’t think I should have to pay for something that was so gross I couldn’t even eat. She went back to her manager, and her manager said that he couldn’t discount more than 50% on the donburi.
Listen: it would be fair to pay 50% if I had eaten 50% of it before complaining. But I didn’t. I took one bite. It was pretty much all still there in the bowl. Defeated, and not wanting to cause stress to the poor server, I paid for the caterpillar roll and 50% of the donburi. And I’m never going back again.
It was truly a bad experience. I’ve never had to write a bad review. Bad food, bad service.

Great food and service! The outside of Koji doesn’t look like much but the food and service made up for it. We came for lunch 4 days in a row since it was so good! We had their sashimi, seaweed ramen soup, ribeye and chicken teriyaki and tempura lunch combos. The tuna and salmon sashimi was very fresh and generously cut in thick slices. The prices are reasonable for the good quality of fish. We will definitely be back on our next visit to Portland!

I come here for lunch a few times a week. If you arrive before 3 there are some great lunch specials my favorite is the tempura lunch you get assorted tempura rice miso and salad for under $ 10. Or if you want sushi the regular assorted is a good way to go.

If I could give even ½ star I would. This place r recently reopened under the Koji name near my work so I thought it was worth a try. I was wrong.
Yuck for the service which was less than spotty with the people sitting at the table next to us actually bringing the empty dishes from their table to the bar to clear the space for after dinner conversation.
My partner had a noodle soup that had noodles with the texture of twine and the broth was very bland. I ordered sushi– nigiri and a roll. It arrived about 20 minutes after the soup and only by some prompting that they check and see if the food was ready.
The interior is old but I did like the retro tables and chairs on wheels in the bar.
Overall I will not ever go back here or recommend this place to anyone I consider my friend.

Koji Osakaya has become our favorite place to get legitimate Japanese food in the PNW. Don’t expect an Americanized aggregate of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese flavors. This place is real Japanese and their dishes are flavorful and delicious!
Current favorite dishes:
Salmon Donburi (Donburi Sake Teriyaki)
Yakitori Chicken
Tonkotsu Ramen
Pork Katsu Curry

Everytime we come to Portland, Koji is a must place to visit. I enjoyed their chirashi last year (and it was great!), but they are strong in everyday Japanese dishes. It was hard to decide what to order.
My son spent 2 weeks in the backcountry of Colorado, and we met up in PDX. His wish was to go to Koji and Kargi Gogo.
At Koji, the service was great, and the price is right. This time, we had katsu curry, We chose the hot one, and it sure was hot! If you are not really into hot (spicy) food, do not order the hot one!

This is a review for a takeout order, only.
I got the Teriyaki Sake Don (rice bowl w/​teriyaki salmon) — not terrible, not awesome. Salmon was kinda thin and dry, but I liked the egg cut into thin ribbons. It’s nice that it came with a side of miso soup, although it was strange that the soup had some fried crunchy (now soggy) things in it instead of tofu…
Service was really nice and I got my order filled quickly. No major complaints, this fit the bill on a crappy night when I was too tired to cook.