YO! Sushi
YO! Sushi
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
PokéStop Nearby: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
3 reviews
Rate and write a review Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
3.5 stars. For a quick, lighter bite in the Short Hills Mall–a good food choice. I had conveyor belt sushi in San Francisco 15 years ago, yet this has a contemporary feel. There are much better sushi places in north NJ, yet this is a good mall light lunch option. Seaweed salad with carrots and dressing was really good. Tuna tatati was ok.
Normally when one branch of a chain restaurant has crappy reviews, the same holds true of their other locations. Being the eternal optimist, however, I hold out a glimmer of hope that exceptions to this rule actually exist. Realizing that the reviews of Yo! Sushi in my local mall (Garden State Plaza) are less than stellar, bordering on dismal, I decided to take the plunge and try their Short Hills Mall location. I should have gone elsewhere.
The concept is simple, a conveyor belt circles the restaurant where you're free to select whichever dishes you choose, eat and pay. The problem is that the same items keep making their rotations, kind of like luggage on an airport carousel that keeps going round and round but that's never claimed. Another problem is that the food is, well, meh. Oh, and it's not cheap, either.
Considering that their initial reviews are fairly bad, I expect them to counter with the same tactic that they used in Paramus where they flooded Yelp with employees, friends and I would assume relatives' reviews that were obviously cut & pasted. I find this to be inexcusable. If your restaurant sucks, read the criticism, learn from it and make changes that will make yourself better. Don't keep serving the same crap i the same way and deceive people. You can fool someone once but without repeat business, I can't see them sustaining for very long.
I've known about Yo Sushi since I first saw it in London way back. When I first heard they were going to open up a US location and one near me, I was so excited! After reading reviews for the Short Hills and Paramus locations however, I was pretty scared. Should I waste my money or should I try it anyway?
Well, I had to return something at Nordstrom so I decided to check it out. Lines at Legal Seafood were long so why not right? Yo Sushi is all the way by Bloomies so it's on that side of the mall.
The staff here are friendly and it's not their fault the sushi sucks. It's just poor management. Our server was good, not great.
The restaurant itself is pretty small for a conveyor belt sushi joint. When we sat down, our server didn't explain the process to us. I think that is a big mistake. The servers should explain how the restaurant works and instill some excitement into the customers. None of that happened, but it didn't matter since I knew what I was getting into. All of the plates that kept going around were the same stuff over and over again. None of them had the time/date stamp on it so I found that a little odd. Some stuff also did not have covers on it so I thought that was odd. I also saw some people pick stuff off and put it back. Gross.
The plates that kept going around were pretty low quality stuff that I didn't want to waste my money on. It was the usual cheap stuff like edamame, california rolls or the most expensive plates, nothing in between and definitely none of the good stuff. I should have taken that as a warning sign. We ended up ordering 8 out of 10 plates and they came out one by one. Some of the people that brought the dishes to us called the dishes by the wrong name. I also didn't get some dishes that I ordered, specifically the soft shell crab. The menu online is also different since the menu online has ikura and the "new" menu doesn't include it. I am not surprised these two items were missing since they are expensive. A lot of the stuff served here are pretty low grade and not worth a lot.
We ordered a tuna maki plate and when it arrived, the tuna was all white. I asked what type of tuna it was and explained the tuna is supposed to be red. The server explained it was white because it's frozen. Coming here, I knew the sushi would be frozen, but for the server to blatantly explain that that was the reason why the color of my sushi was discolored made me lose my appetite.
Our plate of salmon selection came and when the guy put it down. I noticed there was a hair! It was about the size of an eye lash or something. I immediately informed the server. All of this happened within 5 seconds from the moment he brought it to me. I didn't get an apology or anything. He looked like he didn't care. I watched him bring it back to the open kitchen and give it to one of the "sushi chefs" and she looked at it like where's the hair? The least the server could have done was apologize and offer to remove it from my bill.
Overall, the sushi is really low quality. The sushi grade is worse than what you would find in a sushi buffet/Chinese sushi place. Now that's telling you something. The sushi here is not only expensive, but expensive and cheap. If you're going to pay these prices, you might as well head into the city since the prices are comparable for the number of pieces you're getting and you'll get better quality fish. I noticed a lot of the reviews are saying it was awkward to grab plates from the conveyor belt and ordered instead. The whole point of conveyor belt sushi is to get your food off the belt and not order from a menu. It's gimmicky and fun, at least that's how my very positive experiences in Japan, California and Taiwan were. It works there so I don't understand why it doesn't work here. The management here needs a lesson on how to run a restaurant and how to successfully run a conveyor belt sushi place. They need make a trip to Kula for example in California and see how it's supposed to be run. If the restaurant steps up and lowers their prices, putting actual quality stuff out, training their staff and quality controlling the food, I think this place can do well. It's appalling how expensive this place is and for what you're getting. The tuna and salmon they're providing are the scraps and not fit to eat. Something else I noticed, we had a family sit down in front of us. They ate a few plates and left very soon. The woman next to us ordered 2 plates and got the check. This is very telling when your customers are leaving so soon. I don't know if this is a franchise or what, but this place won't last long at the rate that it's going. I said it before, but check out how Kula is run and if you can do that, you will be very popular. Last thing, the green tea here (hot/cold) is made by powder and the miso soup comes out of a machine so it's not the real thing just FYI. Come here and expect not to get anything authentic.