Koji Yakitori Sake Bar

Cool little spot! Very chill low key. Kfc & curry spring rolls are great! Drinks are good! Cais is super friendly as well as her staff.

Have been frequenting Koji for a few years now. I first went in a few years back for a DJ it was such a good time. What I will say is anytime of day Koji has the best eats in Hartford amazing nightlife too. The Expresso martini is top notch you must try!

Best suchi ever. I tried many suchi bars in Hartford but this one is the best. you should try their special and the teriyaki one.

Really like this place! A little pricey, but all the food was delicious and the bartenders were very friendly! She noticed we weren’t from the area since she gets a lot of regulars (seemed to be college students) but it was a good place to sit and have a few drinks while we ate :-)

I just had a drink once there with friends. The place is small and average.

We left before we ordered anything since the video playing next to our table was soft-​core porn. This wasn’t what we were looking for so we left, but if it is your scene then enjoy.

it should be noted this is quite a small & intimate space. The scorpion bowls will knock you on your ass. Service was excellent. Didn’t sample the food. Overall a good time.

Koji is the best time in Hartford, CT. Every time I go there I feel like a Rockstar. The staff is great and the owners, Tuan and Cais are awesome, they are family to me! Great food and drinks make sure you try the KFC one of my favorite dishes!!!

the atmosphere is nice! the waitress was distance but not freindly! the food and drinks are good. i can reccommend

The koji happy hour is clutch. While most happy hours in the area only go to 6pm this one runs until 7pm. Their happy hour also includes food and drinks. Beer drafts are only $ 2.50 and food is $ 3 or so. I think it’s a great value and look forward to going back.

Great chill bar to grab a couple of well made drinks (especially sakitinis) and relax. Koji also offers some very good food options with a modern flare on Japanese cuisine. Koji has gone through some transformations and I kind of feel that they have lost something from their more simple beginnings. I remember coming here years ago when they played Godzilla and Kung-​fu movies on the TVs and seemed to have better service. Now they rely on becoming a dance club at night and having odd events like the bizarre striptease show in order to draw a crowd. Overall the place is very good and is one of my favorite Japanese restaurants but they seem to be holding themselves back from 5 stars.

Talk about a place going downhill. Koji was exciting when it first opened, and quickly became a favorite happy hour spot and dinner locale. I loved the friendly service, strong drinks, the yakitori, and the weird music videos set to the 80s station. I’ve been less and less impressed to the point of not wanting to go anymore. The menu has changed for the worse; the yakitori a la carte no longer exists and their apps taste like they came right from the freezer and into the fry vat. The 80s music has been replaced by whatever douche music that is now, and the saketinis are straight up gross. Recently, a fellow at the bar who was so inebriated he could barely sit up straight was so annoyed that my friends an I didn’t want to engage with him, he resorted to using words towards us that just aren’t cool to say to African Americans and women. Even more recently, we had a server who seemed like she’d never waited tables a day in her life, but tried to compensate by dressing super trashy? She was overwhelmed and unable to remember orders, but dealt with it by acting exasperated and annoyed. So sad when one of your favorite spots goes on the decline in every possible way.

Excellent 5 – 7 happy hour with decent service once we figured out who our waitress was. The interior struck me as a bit odd and worn down (with the WEIRDEST music videos playing — solidly entertaining).
We ordered a few happy hour offerings, $ 1 salad with ginger-​avocado dressing, the «KFC» Koji fried chicken, and the Koji Roll which should have been spicy tuna and crab on the inside, tuna and salmon on the outside. (I got something covered with avocado and spicy mayo instead, hmm.)
Overall, the dining experience was fairly good but nothing to absolutely rave about. The cocktails and sake-​tinis looked particularly interesting but I’ve given up alcohol for the month (wahhhh) so I’ll have to try ‘em again some other time.

Yummy happy hour! They have really good a la carte items and happy hour specials. Martinis were $ 5 and most of the app options were $ 1 – 5. We also had the best waitresses we had in Hartford who were attentive without being too pushy and got the orders right. I got the bamboo roll, edamame, crab rangoon, and a garden salad with avocado dressing. They were all good. The cheesecake was gross/​frozen BJ’s variety but that was the only miss. It is a very small dark bar but it was still good.

5 of us headed down for a quick dinner before going to the gay film festival at 6:30pm. I’m giving this sushi bar 3 stars for the simple facts that the service was good, and the food was amazing. I did find the atmosphere to be drab, run down, outdated music videos and the seats were taped up. I get it. Its in downtown Hartford, but with a little revamping it can be an amazing place again. It is a shadow of its former self. Their website does not list hours of operation and calling to make a reservation was painful since their voicemail was not functioning. Ultimately, reservations were not needed since it was completely deserted.

I love Koji! It’s definitely one of my favorite places to go in Hartford. I’m not much for the club atmosphere, so I definitely prefer the lounge-​vibe that Koji has got going on. The bartenders are awesome (Michelle and Cais are my faves!) The atmosphere is cool and it’s not unusual to strike up a conversation with multiple people at the bar.
I’ve eaten there a few times, and the food is good but it definitely doesn’t stack up to some of the other places in Hartford. The Bento boxes at lunchtime are good; we used to get them at our office all the time. I’m not a very adventurous eater when I’m there because I’m usually just there to hang, but what I’ve had there is pretty good.
If you are looking for top-​notch, gourmet Japanese food, you’ll probably be disappointed. More often than not the atmosphere doesn’t suit that anyway. But if you are looking for an awesome place to hang out with cool people and drink delicious libations, look no further than Koji.
Also, the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month is open mic comedy starting at 10pm. If you are into drinking on Tuesdays and supporting local comics, come on down and say hello. I’ll be the one with the microphone.

Holy god. I have never been to a worse Japanese restaurant… if not ANY restaurant in my life. I really feel the need to steer people away from here, lest they end up paying exorbitant prices for terrible cooked food, and sushi that I actually returned for not being fresh.
My friends who got Miso? Said it tasted like dirty dishwater, and it obviously had like 1 piece of tofu in it, and no seaweed or green of any kind.
The «Sake Bar» part of the place was actually what drew me in – I worked with a Japanese firm for a year and like to think I’ve developed some kind of pallet for sake. Well, there were cold 3 sakes available and 1 hot sake.
THAT is a «Sake Bar»?
No, that’s a bar that happens to have a little sake. Moreover, the bartender had absolutely no clue was the terms «Nigori» and «Ginjo» meant, and explained the 3 to me as «clean, medium, and milky»… greeeeaaaaat.
Add to that the small portions and the high prices, and I can’t believe this place is still in business. I guess they get away with the nightlife crowd who avoid sake and go for American cocktails. Why not just turn it into a cocktail bar and end the charade?

UPDATE 2: Seems Koji has undergone a bit of a renovation. There’s new seating and the food seemed as if it’s fumbling back towards being on track. The décor and TV screens seem to be a mainstay, as those elements were the same when I went some weeks ago. Stay tuned…
UPDATE 3 6÷5÷11: Koji seems to’ve redeemed itself. Great and personable bartenders, eclectic mix of patrons, great ½-​priced Happy Hour menu (from 4pm-​7pm), and tasty sake-​based cocktails. Try their Scorpion Bowl!

Four of us split a scorpion bowl for $ 20. I’m pretty sure we got the strawberry flavor, but I’m not sure. You can get it with either Red Bull or Sugar-​Free Red Bull, which is nice, since I usually opt for sugar free or diet with my beverages. It was pretty tasty and we got our buzz on before heading to dinner.
I liked the music they were playing here. I was expecting top 40’s pop, but they featured EDM (on the electro/​house side, from what I recall), which I’m a personal fan of. This seems like a nice chill place to relax and kick back a few drinks with friends. Definitely try the scorpion bowl. It’s good and it’s always fun to share!

Yum!
Came here to get drinks before a late dinner. Four of us shared a scorpion bowl, which was yummy. Didn’t have anything else, so can’t offer an extensive review.
Ambience was okay — there’s a lot of seating and an open area, I guess so people could dance, but no one was. There was a live DJ, which was a nice touch. I didn’t quite understand the televisions with photo slideshows of previous patrons. I guess it’s fun if you’re a local and you come often and submit photos of you and your crew, but to me it was unnecessary to have to look at lots and lots of vain dudes and chicks that think they’re hot… but that’s just me.