My favorite cuisine is still Japanese food, and even though I love all sorts of different cuisine from all over the world, I still crave some good Japanese food every now and then if I don’t get to have them for a while. But, it is not always easy to find a good Japanese restaurants, especially when you are out of the city. Also, you don’t always know the best spot in an unfamiliar city/town. The best way to find a good place to eat? Ask the locals! When I was visiting Longmont, CO, we went to a restaurant that has a little bit of all sorts of Asian food; Malaysian, Singaporean, Japanese, Chinese…etc., called Kho’s Asian Bistro.
With not so high expectations, I was more than willing to give this place a try. As soon as you enter, you are welcomed by nice staff and a small waterfall. The place was not so busy, as it was a weekday dinner time.
The entrance area was narrow and goes long way back, with sushi counter on one side and several table and booth seating on the back. They had very dark brown furniture, minimal artworks on the wall, no frills, just the basics.
We started with few small plates and a soup. I ordered Pork Dumpling Soup ($2.50). When it came to the table, I was surprised to see 2 pork gyoza in the soup! I was expecting different kind (shape) of dumplings, from my past experience at any Chinese restaurants. I should mention, the staffs here are NOT Chinese. The soup and gyoza were too salty, could only take but couple of sips before I felt too much salty taste in my mouth. When waitress saw that I didn’t touch the soup much. she asked if everything was ok. When I said it was too salty and I am done with the soup. she offered to remake the soup, which I politely declined. She was super nice and polite.
Then, small plates. we ordered Edamame ($4.95), Gyoza ($5.95/regular portion), and Lobak ($7.95). Edamame was tasty, cooked just right, with right amount of salt. The Gyoza, well, since they were the same kinds that were in my soup, they were salty. You don’t need soy sauce since that will make it way too salty even more so. Since I was there with a large group, and ordered several appetizers to share among tables, I am not sure if this is the regular portion, or if they put 2 orders on 1 plate, as they were lots of Gyoza on the plate.
Lobak is a Malaysia deep fried minced chicken with bean curd skins. Which sounded interesting, but it lacked flavor. Better with the sauce that they had on the side, but still not amazing. Out of all the food we ordered, this one didn’t get many votes…
Then, the main item of the night, SUSHI!!! We asked them to create a sushi boat with assorted sushi for us. The sushi was amazingly awesome, so much better than expected. I should mention, the staff are NOT Japanese, so I was thinking the sushi would not be that great. They certainly proved me wrong. Each pieces of sushi was thick, fresh, and delicious! The Ikura (salmon roe), which is my favorite, was really great, they had super generous amount of it on the sushi rice. I don’t know how many pieces of sushi I had this night, but I was so happy, it was sushi heaven.
We also ordered Love Boat for Two ($60), which comes with one Rainbow roll, One Longmont Roll & 14 pcs Sushi. Sorry I couldn’t get the photo of the Love Boat, as it was at the other end of the table. The Longmont Roll is s roll with spicy tuna, yellowtail, salmon & avocado.
After the sushi, most of us ordered a noodle dish to finish off the dinner. I ordered Penang Udang Mee. You can choose to have it with Chicken, Beef, Shrimp, or Tofu. I chose to have mine with Tofu, which came out of be $10.95 (price varies with the protein selection). So, I learned that “Udang” means shrimp broth, and “Mee” means noodle. Interesting. This dish came with noodles in shrimp broth with bean sprout & egg, and fried tofu. I was not expecting the tofu to be fried tofu, a bit disappointing. The soup had a nice little kick to it, but not really spicy. Better with spicy sauce (Sriracha) added on top, and mix it with the soup. It had crazy amount of fried tofu, and lots of bean sprout. I was soooo full that I could not finish this dish, and it was not the best Udang Mee I have ever had…
Service was excellent, several waitresses all took a very good care of us, with big smile and very attentive. Super friendly, polite, everyone was lovely. I would go back for the sushi. not sure about other dishes, but they do a really nice sushi!
Kho’s Asian Bistro – 1325 Dry Creek Dr #106, Longmont, CO 80503