Over the last few months, word has slowly trickled out about Kojima, a new no-frills omakase counter on the second floor of Sawtelle Place. Run by Hayato Kojima—previously of Tokyo’s Michelin-recognized, now-closed Nishi-Ogikubo Hayato—the West L.A. restaurant’s signature offering, a $200 omakase,is a bit of a misnomer, at least here in the U.S., where the term has largely become synonymous with high-end sushi. The boorish omakase bro in search of an endless cavalcade of nigiri and a hand roll or two to finish is likely to be disappointed.
What Kojima offers, instead, is something far more quietly thrilling, especially for those of us who actually glance at the bill after dining. Although untethered from the form’s rigid constraints, the restaurant presents a dozen courses that are loosely but distinctly inspired by kaiseki—the traditional Japanese multi-course dining experience emphasizing seasonality and harmony. In both spirit and substance, if not always pacing, the meal bears more than a passing similarity to two-Michelin-star Hayato in the Arts District ($450) all for a fraction of the price.
Aside from a lone server, Kojima-san singlehandedly pulls off a tasting menu that may contain, at any given moment, creamy whorls of shirako with fried taro and ankake, a thick, velvety sauce made with dashi; the best grilled chicken heart you’ll ever have in your life; chilled housemade noodles topped with shredded cucumber and myoga, or Japanese ginger; and the ever-changing gohan (cooked rice) course, featuring a donburi anointed with matsutake mushrooms and duck, or perhaps sea bream and ikura. Of particular note is the salad-topped beef course, made with a subtler, ultra-rare type of Wagyu from Tanegashima that, as far as I have tried to ascertain, isn’t regularly available anywhere else in the United States.
Despite a few minor quibbles with execution, Kojima (or, as my fiancé and I jokingly call it, the Hayato of the Westside) easily beats out far pricier, flashier L.A. openings this year in terms of overall delight and value. After the semi-anonymous gourmands of Food Talk Central and podcaster Max Shapiro caught onto the restaurant’s critical potential, I booked a seat in late August. A follow-up meal in early October, featuring an entirely different set of dishes, has led me to wholeheartedly concur. Factoring in the chef's sourcing relationships, level of execution in the kitchen and ever-changing menu, Kojima is the rare new restaurant that, at least compared to most L.A. tasting menus, offers real bang for your buck.
A meal here might begin with a minimalist preparation of steamed Hokkaido hairy crab—the meat carefully removed and mixed with white rice, plopped back into the shell with a mound of bright orange roe. Since opening, Kojima-san has scaled back on sushi, but you can still expect a few types of sashimi, plus a variety of fried and grilled dishes. On my most recent meal, I enjoyed slices of grilled mackerel topped with chives, plus another crab course topped with daikon radish and ikura; the seasonal fungi was also featured in the gohan course. I cannot tell you what you’ll have on your visit; even from week to week, the chef swaps out dishes and ingredients, freely remixing elements of kaiseki into an array of edible wonders without ever straying too far from the fundamentals of Japanese cooking.
Thus far, with staggered bookings every fifteen minutes between 5 and 9pm, Kojima-san has adopted a rolling, somewhat whimsical approach to coursing. On my first visit, I received the same dish as the party of two next to me, who had arrived an hour earlier, though the gohan course, as is customary in kaiseki, arrived at the end of the meal. Based on a recent look at Tock, however, it appears that Kojima has switched to offering two distinct seating at 5pm and 7:45pm on Friday and Saturday evenings. That approach may only help with the minor pacing issues I experienced on my second visit, where it took over 20 minutes to receive my first course.
Compared to other high-end Japanese imports like Uka in Hollywood—a forgettable meal, in my experience—and nearby Asakura, Kojima is one of the few places in L.A. I’d recommend for a rarified Japanese meal. At the same time, it currently lacks the bull’s-eye precision of Hayato or n/naka: as with most matters involving capitalism, something has to give. At $200 per head, I find it unlikely you’ll ever come across a gohan course featuring nodoguro, one of the most expensive types of fish in the world, like I once experienced at Hayato. While enjoying a fish soup course, I encountered a handful of errant scales, which I was forced to retrieve from my mouth. Mostly, though, these handful of shortcomings recede into the background in light of Kojima-san’s undeniable talent and once again, that unforgettably tender chicken heart. (Normally, I don't even usually like chicken hearts, preferring the chewiness of gizzards.)
There are also two other factors to consider before booking a reservation here: the relatively casual ambience and the language barrier between you and Kojima-san, who is in the process of learning English. The second-floor space that now houses Kojima previously held Mochi Dochi, a mochi doughnut shop. Despite the addition of a chef’s counter around the L-shaped open kitchen and a series of white noren (Japanese-style rectangular curtains) billowing overhead, a meal here still feels like you’re dining inside a hastily converted strip mall joint. If you don’t speak conversational Japanese, you are likely to lose out on the finer details of what you’re eating. Kojima-san will try his best, and the bilingual server is usually able to roughly translate exactly what you’re being served. After a few courses, however, you might not even care about labels—when the food’s this delicious, it might not even matter.
There’s also the relative ease of access. At least for now, Kojima is an easy table to snag. Compare this to Hayato, which sells out almost instantly the moment reservations drop on the first of each month, and n/naka, whose rolling tables for two also book up within minutes every Sunday at 10am. While this may change as word spreads (or even with this very review), Kojima-san’s loose interpretation of kaiseki is still worth seeking out for Japanophiles and those in search of a relatively unique, special-occasion meal with good value.
If you don’t want to commit to spending $200, Kojima also offers a $80 mini omakase around 5pm, albeit only for walk-ins. Though I’ve yet to experience it firsthand, the truncated menu offers a selection of four or five dishes from the full menu—enough to whet your appetite and get a sense of Kojima-san‘s cooking style, but certainly not enough to leave you totally satisfied. Still, the mini omakase is a bright spot in the increasingly gloomy bang-for-your-buck landscape. It’s not very often these days that opportunities arise to ball on a budget in L.A., and I'm thankful for this grace, no matter how small.
Kojima earned five stars—“amazing”—from us. To find out more about Time Out’s curation methods and ethics policies, head to our global “How we review” page.