Koze

Came to Koze for the first time last week with my husband and his parents who were in town for the evening! My husband is a fan of hibachi style cuisine so we looked up a spot near our home and Koze was the first to pop up! They also had good reviews so we were all for it. When we first arrived the hostess asked if we wanted to be seated at the grill (for show) or the dining room.
Since my husband does like watching the cook do his thing, we opted to wait the 15-20 minutes for a grill to become available.
Next time we will definitely make note to call ahead and make a reservation though! Once we were seated we looked over the menu to see our options.
I will say that the service at Koze was a bit lacking.
Our waitress took quite a while to come around for our drink order, main course and then at the end of the evening for us to pay our bill.
I’m not sure if she was serving a lot of other tables for the night but that was just our experience.
It would have been nice if she came around more so we weren’t looking for her. My husbands parents got the shrimp and scallop meal to split, my husband ordered the chicken and scallops.
I, however, decided to try their sushi - so I got the California roll and the BBQ salmon roll. Once the chef came around to start cooking (which took quite a while) he started the show.
I will also note that there was a bit of a language barrier between us and the chef.
He tried asking us questions, such as if we were celebrating a birthday, but it was very hard for us to understand what he was saying.
We could also tell he was a bit new at the job because certain “tricks” he’d mess up on or had to try a couple times before he got it right. For the food, I will say that I did enjoy my sushi.
Both rolls were delicious! My husband ate mostly the protein on his plate.
They give a huge portion of fried rice for the main courses, it’s definitely enough for two people.
I believe his parents said they thought the meal was good as well. I think it came down to the service we received which kind of left a bad impression.
The food was good it was just the lack of service that left me wanting more.
I know there are other hibachi restaurants in El Paso.
I will probably try those with my husband.
I wouldn’t mind coming back to Koze, I understand maybe they were just having a bad day.
But I would also try other places.

I really wanted to like this place.
With the lack of great Asian cuisine here, I was hoping that I'd finally have a "go to" when it comes to satisfying my craving for Japanese food.
I tried it and was left underwhelmed.
We started with the miso soup which was a little cold, but good.
The shrimp tempura, while abundant, was very heavy and tasted of oil.
To top it off, it was over drizzled with mayonnaise and another sauce.
Not my favorite.
We also had alcoholic drinks, which while pretty, they were also very watered down.
For the entree I got the chicken and shrimp with the side of rice and veggies.
The rice was okay.
The chicken and shrimp were both sauced with the same thing, I'm assuming a soy glaze.
The shrimp were also a little fishy.
Very lack luster experience, but our hostess was excellent.
The lava cake was also standard.
Overall 1 appetizer, 2 drinks, 2 entrees and 1 dessert = >130.00 😬 it's pretty steep for what we got. I've had better experiences from food trucks in Hawaii.

Great dinner and drinks.
Sat at a table in the bar area, not at a hibachi table.
Bartender gave good service, offered options for drinks.
911 sushi roll was spicy and fantastic!!! Filet and shrimp dinner was quite tasty!!!