Review: Koj, Cheltenham

I feel the need to ‘splain this up front. We were lucky enough to visit Japan just over a year ago, and as well as some convoluted kaiseki feasts and high-end tempura temples, we also ate tons and tons of delicious casual Japanese cooking – tonkatsu restaurants, okonomiyaki places, and smoky bars serving yakitori and beer to the after-work crowd of men in suits. So we enjoyed the real deal, at ridiculous prices (only in Japan can you enjoy a fantastic meal for under a tenner and then struggle to find a basic hotel for under a hundred!).

So I was going to need to employ some Zen and empty my mind before dining at the new casual Japanese street food-inspired, no-sushi restaurant opening in Cheltenham. Koj, the Kickstarter-backed dream of Andrew Kojima. It’s a friendly place, although it seems to be a little unsure of whether it’s chic or laid-back; colourful hand-painted Japanese logos and icons on the wall, cool black-and-grey furniture. The staff were friendly and enthusiastic. It would be a good place to stop for a pre-theatre bite to eat, which is exactly what we did.

It’s all small plates, and we went through half-a-dozen with a couple of sides. KFC (Koj Fried Chicken) were satisfyingly random-shaped dollops of deep-fried goodness, light and flavourful batter, juicy chicken, tasty sesame mayo dip. More deep-fried goodies, this time panko-crusted shitake mushroom chunks, absolutely nowt wrong with them. We also picked out a couple of hirata buns. The buns themselves were nice puffy teeth-sticking sweet dough. Mine was filled with pale and soft pulled pork and some finely shredded pickled veggies at the back, a good combination though I like my street food with more oomph. Maureen’s soft-shell crab bun was nice too, a decently crispy soft-shell crab with a mayo blob. I’m not going to pull out any stronger adjective than “nice” though, because surely the purpose of street food is to leave you saying “oh wow, let’s order another one! Or maybe three!” and we weren’t quite saying that.

The other dish we had was the squid okonomiyaki, and it was the same sorta thing. Okonomiyaki is a filthy, starchy, flavourful, jumble of gubbins. That’s the whole point. If you refine it and take the “street” out of the street food then it’s just… food. Don’t get me wrong, it was perfectly tasty and if you’ve never had okonomiyaki then it’s a nice intro, kinda like your first bike with the training wheels on.

So that’s where I end up. Uncertain whether I’ve been impartial enough, or whether I’ve let my very real delight in the actual food of Japan set my expectations far too high? Dishes are £4-8 so you’d be spending £20 each for a light meal. Their entry level sake was £10 for a small 125ml flask (it was jolly good though). It’s really good to have another Japanese option in Cheltenham, and I’m gonna go back, but I guess I’m hoping the menu gets a bit more “street” in it!

UPDATE: Been back since, enjoyed it again, definitely a good place for a casual bite in Cheltenham – just not quite oh-wow-tell-all-your-friends great.