KoJa Kitchen – San Jose

1085 E Brokaw Rd #10

San Jose, CA 95131

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Located in a busy plaza conveniently across from a gym, KoJa Kitchen serves up Korean Japanese Asian fusion from their food truck roots. Featured on the Food Network, their food truck fame does bring a draw to their recently-opened brick and mortar restaurant. When we arrived in the restaurant, we found the line and copies of their menu. There was only one group ahead of us while we reviewed the menu.

Today, we decided to order the beef koja, kamikaze fries, umami fries, and strawberry mango mint lemonade slushie. The beef koja was tasty and came with an ample amount of marinated beef, a small slice of pineapple, and some lettuce all sandwiched between two rice buns. I did not taste much of the garlic flavor in the buns nor any red sauce, but the combination of flavors did taste good together. Both of the fry dishes seemed to have fresh toppings with not as fresh fries. The fries were not crispy and were not hot. The kamikaze fries included finely minced beef that tasted extremely marinated, but I did not see much of any kimchi inside. The fries did go well with the beef Japanese mayo. The umami fries consisted of several chunks of tasty pork and tasted a bit sweet. The umami fries seemed to have more flavor than the kamikaze fries. The slushie had a strong minty taste, and you can make out the strawberry and lemonade, but only a slight mango taste.

Overall, KoJa Kitchen serves up some nice fusion dishes centered around their rice buns and topped fries all at reasonable prices, but the quality of fries fell short. All of the meats came marinated and full of flavor, but each dish fell short of expectations from reading the menu. If you like Korean and or Japanese food, you should definitely give KoJa Kitchen a try even with their shortcomings.

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