Kobe Japanese Express

I love the hokie one. Hokie sauce is good and sweet carrot taste good. Simple and quick lunch place.

This is my go to Japanese food in Blacksburg. Hokie sauce is awesome. I didn’t care much for the sweet carrots.

I will eat here when in Bburg and I want Hibachi but it’s not often. As a student I thought this was great, now not so much. The food is solidly «ok». The portions are okay – not as big as Sakura but possibly more or the same amount of meat. i’m not a fan of the carrots – they are very sweet and soft. The hokie sauce is yummy and helps the meal along. A little more expensive than Sakura but given locatioin i understand.

I ate here all senior year in college (class of 2014) and to this day I dream about the food. Have thought about driving 6 hours round trip to get it. I don’t know what they put in it, but it is the best thing for a hangover.

I like Kobe and I can’t say I have ever had a bad experience. I just think it’s a bit expensive for the portion size. I am not a fan of the vegetarian hibachi but I do love the steak and chicken hibachi.

A lot of people say it’s over priced, but I always leave full and happy, so I think it’s worth it!
Plus, who doesn’t love their yum-​yum sauce?

I’m a VT alum (BS 2005, MS 2007). My friends and I ate at Kobe way back when. This weekend, I was in town for Steppin Out, and of course everything downtown was really crowded for lunch. But Kobe, thankfully, wasn’t.
Kobe’s food is *exactly* like I remember it from about seven years ago, and that’s a good thing. It’s still delicious. The portions are still huge. And there is still Hokie Sauce!
Hokie Sauce is the only thing you need to know about Kobe.
No one really knows what Hokie Sauce is. My friend used to say it was cocktail sauce mixed with mayonnaise; I don’t know if that’s true or not. Don’t think too hard about it. Just drench your food in it.
I always get the veggie combo, which is sauteed thinly sliced veggies over rice. The entrees also come with sweet carrots. I don’t like carrots, but these are okay and I can usually be persuaded to eat a few of them. You can sub other things in place of the carrots, though I think there is a charge for this.
Kobe is hidden around the back of a little shopping center, so it took me a long time to find it. I now regret all those years that could have been filled with Hokie Sauce.

Kobe is one of those places you can only eat once in a blue moon to feel borderline satisfied. I usually go to Sakura in Christiansburg instead. The prices are the same, but Sakura’s portions are way larger and quality is great for the price (ask for filet mignon, medium/​medium rare), and it comes with soup and salad. However, when I am having one of those lazy days on the weekends, I order Kobe for delivery. The meat is usually too dry and overcook for my liking. But ehh, it’s fast and great for when I don’t want to drive anywhere.

On April 7,2014 I visited Kobe Japanese Express. I ordered the shrimp with broccoli. I paid the cashier in cash, she did not provide me with a receipt which I later realized. After waiting for my meal I took one look at in the car before driving off. Immediately I was unsatisfied at the portion size and the appeal of the food. I got small six shrimp, dry white rice, overcooked limp broccoli, and mushy sweet carrots. I walked back inside to just ask for my money back. The cashier went to the owner/​cook and told him of my request. He came from the kitchen and said you can’t have your money back. I told him I tried one shrimp and didn’t like it. He replied «You can’t have your money back, and if you go anywhere else you can’t get your money back because you don’t like the food. We don’t guarantee that you will like the food, thats your problem». I then said to him «I am a chef. Your rice is dry, carrots are overcooked, and the broccoli is as well.» He told me «No you can’t have your money back yelling at the top of his lungs». I responded by saying you don’t have to yell at me. He then said «I can do what I want DONT FUCK WITH ME». I told him the floors were dirty and he said you look dirty, I believe he was making reference to my skin color because I’m black. He then also said «You come clean the floors then». He told the cashier to just give me my money back and «DONT YOU EVER COME BACK HERE AGAIN». I got my money and left.

Meh. Kobe’s service was very slow (although pleasant enough) and the food was just mediocre. I felt the portion of teriyaki chicken was on the skimpy side. The sweet carrots were straight out of Grandma’s Sunday dinner. The best I can say about the much-​vaunted Hokie Sauce is that it made the dried-​out rice somewhat more palatable. I’ll give this a miss next time I hit Blacksburg.

Kobe is one of my favorite places to go in Blacksburg. It’s pretty cheap and the food is delicious. The Hokie Sauce is the best thing ever.
Get a #3 — Teriyaki Chicken. Ask for steamed rice (white rice), as it tastes better.
The service here is a little bit sub-​par, but you get what you pay for.
A $ 10 meal that tastes great. Well worth it.

Absolutely love their food. Recommend the steak and shrimp! The Hokie sauce is definitely a nice addition!

Definitely one of my favorite to go places in town when I am really hungry! I love their steak and the Hokie sauce is a must have for every restaurant! I wish the portions were a bit larger though.

The kobe sauce is such a weird mixture. I’m not even sure what it is, but I can’t stop eating it! The meat and veggies are cooked on a flat top while the rice is premade and kept warm in a rice cooker. The asian in me says «no, this is not good!» but the amercanized me says, «this is so good, give me more sauce!». although the steak is cooked unevenly, the flavors are still great. I dislike the EXTREMELY sweet carrots, so I always replace those with onions and zucchini (at a cost). the seating isn’t the classiest, nor is the plating (styrofoam) but you always leave full (if you don’t like enormous portions) and not TOO weighed down from the grease.

The food is delicious and I highly recommend everything on the menu EXCEPT the miso soup. It’s the instant kind you get at a grocery store. The customer service is pretty bad and I don’t recommend getting it to go b/​c they definitely gyp you on the portions. They are lucky for that hokie sauce bc that is what keeps people coming back!

Food here is amazing. The carrots are just, almost too good for words. Hokie sauce is amazing,
It would be an easy 5 stars if their portions weren’t so tiny. Im always still hungry.

Just about the absolute best when it comes to express Japanese food! Their «Hokie sauce» is amazing poured over any of their entrees! It’s so good that they had to stop leaving bottles of it on their dining tables because students would steal them. Now you sadly just get a small container of it with your entrée, and if you want extra they charge you (I don’t remember the price off the top of my head). They are a little pricy worth it! I usually get either the teriyaki steak or chicken with broccoli, and each comes with a side of sweet carrots (so good) and their rice — which is best just drowned in that Hokie sauce! The Hokie fish isn’t bad either. You can call in your order if you’d like to pick it up, and they also deliver but it is a $ 15 minimum. But trust me, you will not be disappointed!

I was in Blacksburg for work and two of my coworkers, both former Hokies, said I had to try Kobe. The interior isn’t much to look at but trust that food is pretty good. Since we were dining on the company dime, we all decided to do it up with steak and shrimp dishes. The dish comes with a side of mushrooms and sweet carrots which don’t necessarily add much to the meal, except deliciousness.
And now, for the piece de resistance: the famed (and slightly mysterious) Hokie sauce. What’s in it? What IS it? No one really knows but this creamy condiment is so popular, there are signs in the restaurant that note that if you steal the Hokie sauce, there will be consequences, so take heed and don’t steal the stuff!

This is one of those restaurants that everyone loves but you’re not really sure why (see: Cabo Fish Taco) because it’s just not very good, not even for Blacksburg. And then you eat there a couple of times and you realize you’re starting to like it more and more each time, and you wonder if it’s because it’s really better than you first realized or if your standards are just getting that low.
Well, if you want Japanese food, don’t go here. For that matter, don’t really go anywhere in Blacksburg (Blacksburg has some okay sushi, but anything else Japanese– and there’s a lot more to Japanese cuisine than just sushi– be wary). But if you want something quick and meaty, with names that sound like Japanese food but have really nothing to do with the food in question, go here.
Everyone raves about the Hokie sauce, which I think is something like a heavily watered down Thousand Island but I’m not entirely positive, but it’s just a strange condiment to add to something that’s supposed to be Japanese food. Unfortunately, the chicken (or beef) is always dried out to the point that you actually need to use the Hokie sauce just to get some kind of moisture in your food.
What saves this place, however, is the Hokie fish. It’s always cooked well and has a nice teriyaki-​style glaze that just works, and you don’t even need the Hokie sauce for it– it’s good enough to eat on its own. Get it with broccoli and you have a pretty decent meal.
I hate bashing locally owned, mom and pop places, but this place has plenty of fans, which never ceases to surprise me. I’ll recommend it, but mostly for the fish, which says a lot considering we’re nowhere near the ocean and I’m generally suspicious of seafood here as it is.

Hands down my favorite restaurant in Blacksburg. Now that I’ve graduated I miss it so much. I hate most Japanese food but I always get the Tapanyaki chicken (#2) with no carrots and no mushrooms (just chicken and rice baby) and soak it in Hokie Sauce. yummmm.
I was in town for a career fair a couple weeks ago and stuffed myself with 2 dinners because I couldn’t deny myself Kobe. I ate my whole plate and then proceeded to Cabo for my company-​sponsored meal. I was extremely overstuffed but it was entirely worth it.