Koi Sushi & Hibachi on FM 544 is a full-service Japanese restaurant that has quietly built a loyal following in Wylie without much fanfare — and that loyalty says everything you need to know before you walk through the door.
First, the room. It’s larger than you’d expect from a strip-mall address, with a row of hibachi grills running along one side and a proper sushi bar anchoring the other. The two halves of the restaurant draw completely different crowds on any given Friday night: families celebrating birthdays at the sizzling hibachi tables, couples splitting rolls and a bottle of sake on the quieter sushi side. You can sit wherever fits your mood, and both are worth your time.
If you’re going hibachi, come hungry. The teppanyaki dinners come with soup, salad, fried rice, and vegetables before your protein even lands on the grill — and the portions are generous enough that most people take something home. The filet and shrimp combo runs around $30 and is the order most regulars default to. The chefs keep the theatrics alive without overdoing it, which is exactly right for a weeknight dinner that doesn’t need to feel like a production.
The sushi side is where Koi earns the most credit, though. The fish quality here runs noticeably higher than what you’d find at a lot of suburban Japanese spots in the DFW metro. The nigiri is clean and simply presented — salmon, yellowtail, and the tuna especially are worth ordering as standalones before you get into the specialty rolls. The Dragon Roll and the Koi Roll both show up on a lot of tables, but if you’re inclined to wander off the greatest-hits menu, the kitchen handles sashimi plates with the same care.
Lunch is a different experience altogether. The bento boxes are a reasonable deal — usually in the $12 to $16 range — and the midday pace is slower, which makes it a good option if you want to actually talk to whoever you’re with. The miso soup here is better than average: properly dashi-forward, not watery, with tofu that hasn’t been sitting in the bowl long enough to fall apart.
A couple of practical things worth knowing: the hibachi side books up on weekends, so if you’re bringing more than four people and you want a teppanyaki table on a Saturday, call ahead or plan to wait. Parking in the center is usually fine. The service is attentive without hovering — the staff know most of their regulars by now, and you’ll feel that warmth even on a first visit.
What makes Koi worth returning to isn’t any single dish but the consistency. Wylie has added a lot of restaurants over the past several years as the city has grown, and plenty of them have come and gone. Koi has stayed, and the people who eat there regularly keep coming back — which, in a suburb where options are multiplying fast, is the most honest endorsement a restaurant can earn.
