Yo! Sushi

kiss_me_now9

Went to Yo! Sushi for the first time today - overall I have to say it was a very pleasant experience. Two things marred it though...

1) It was our first time ever going to this style of restaurant and we basically walked in, were sat down and then left to our own devices. It may be a self explanatory system but it took us nearly half an hour to figure out how to get a drink (you have to press the button, but not too long, and only once apparently) and we didn't really get what was going on.

2) As it was a Monday, they were running their usual 'Blue Monday' offer. For anyone not in the know, basically this means all plates on the belt are charged at the price of the blue plate, £2.40. Apart from they're not. I picked up a yellow plate* which was going around on the belt... For those not in the know, yellow is the most expensive plate priced at £6. We only found this out as we were finishing our meal and glancing down the bottom of the drinks menu to figure out our total to find a tiny table which explained the pricing of the plates.

To make it clearer for people who haven't been - we had a paper menu on our table with 'Blue Monday' on the top of it. It said underneath it (I remember this very clearly as I insisted to my BF that it meant that everything on offer was £2.40) All plates on the belt today for just £2.40.. There was NO mention of yellow plates being £6, on the Blue Monday menu, to us when we arrived, or even on the 'specials' board that went around on the conveyor belt. The ONLY mention of yellow plates being £6 was in very small print at the very bottom of the drink menu where all the different plate colours were explained - but as it was Blue Monday, only blue and a few yellow plates were going around. I simply assumed that they had run out of blue plates for that 'batch' of food and were using yellow plates.

We didn't say anything at the end because there were a few people waiting behind us to pay - but if there hadn't have been, I would've queried it.

Is this misleading? Or am I really that simple? There is nothing on the website about specials being charged as £6 on Blue Mondays either - in fact the terms and conditions simply say this:

1. Offer valid off the conveyor belt only and not applicable on miso, drinks or take-away.
2. Any hot/cold orders not available on the Blue Mondays menu will be charged at normal price.
3. Offer valid at YO! Sushi: Brighton, Brent Cross, Bluewater, Birmingham Selfridges, Bristol Cabot Circus, Camden, Cambridge, County Hall, Bristol Cribbs Causeway, Eden High Wycombe, Farringdon, Fenwick Newcastle, Finchley Road, Fulham Broadway, Portsmouth Gunwharf Quays, Plymouth, Edinburgh Harvey Nichols, Leeds Harvey Nichols, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Highcross, Croydon House of Fraser, Glasgow House of Fraser, Reading House of Fraser, Lakeside, Liverpool ONE, London Waterloo, Windsor, Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Arndale, MetroCentre Gateshead, Meadowhall Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Bath Milsom Place, Oxford, Nottingham, Norwich, Soho, Leicester Square, Southbank Centre Festival Hall, Bond Street, Guildford, Manchester Selfridges Trafford, Glasgow Silverburn, Solihull Touchwood, Cardiff St David’s, St Pancras Station, St Paul's, Russell Square, Victoria Station, Southampton WestQuay, Danile Windsor, Westfield Stratford, Bayswater Aberdeen Bon Accord, Aberdeen Union Square York, and Exeter.
4. Offer not transferable or available in conjunction with another offer (e.g. our Student discount) and there is no cash alternative.
5. YO! Sushi Manager’s decision is final.

*Which, if I had known the price of it, I wouldn't have bothered with as it was cold sticky chilli beef and wasn't worth the £6 :eek: I had to pay for it... In fact, I think it was the worst dish of the whole meal. A close second was the mochi, those things are gross...

mad_dr

Unfortunately for my wallet, I spend far too much time and therefore money in Yo! Sushi. It certainly isn't cheap so it's always best to do what you did and visit on either Blue Monday or Sumo Sunday (all you can eat for a fixed price) or use a voucher code.

Every time I visit (and, as I mentioned, that's a LOT) I'm asked if I've visited before. Obviously I always say yes but when I overhear other folks saying no, the waiter/ess always goes on to explain that the button is used for attracting attention to order drinks or hot food or anything that's not on the belt. It's pretty shoddy that they didn't explain this to you or even ask if you'd visited before.

As for the yellow plate, only a few locations offer these; they're premium plates. They definitely ought to have pointed this out to you. In fact, I must have not been to a premium location before because normally Blue Monday is a sea of blue plates and nothing else. To help prevent confusion you usually won't see anything on the belt on a Monday that ISN'T on a blue plate; even plain rice (£1.80 normally on a green plate) has to be ordered from the server.

Were there lots of yellow plates whizzing round or just the one you picked up?

Overall, I'm a sushi fan and think that Yo! Sushi does it better than most. Given that sushi hasn't caught on in the UK anywhere near as much as it has on the continent or in North America I think that Yo! Sushi does pretty well and helps me get my sushi fix! Sounds like they let you down a bit - drop them a mail - their customer service is usually great; slow service usually elicits a 20% discount off the entire bill when it's bad enough to mention.

Cheers!

fluffnutter

It took you half an hour to work out how to get a drink?? Why on earth didn't you ask someone?

Charliezoo

I've never been on a Blue Monday before but presumed any colour dish would be charged tha same price as a blue one so yeah I'd say it's misleading.

Mk14:37

fluffnutter wrote: »

It took you half an hour to work out how to get a drink?? Why on earth didn't you ask someone?

Agreed. And I can never understand the whiners who come here complaining to all an sundry about being "ripped off" and then claiming "I would have said something, but there was a queue...". WGAS? Speak now, or forever hold your peace.... :cool:

aileth

To be honest, the fact that there was a sea of blue plates with the odd yellow one would've indicated to me that they weren't included, or raised enough suspicion for me to enquire. And as regards the button ordering, last time I went in Yo Sushi (Maybe two weeks or so ago), even when we responded that we had been there before she still pointed out the button to us, and when we pressed it she appeared like a wizard.

I have to say as well saying that Mochi are gross, I'm guessing it's not Yo Sushi's mochi that were gross (they have been very nice when I've had them), but they are quite an acquired taste. It's a shame you had a bad experience as I absolutely love going.

helcat26

I am sorry yiu did not enjoy your meal.
We do not get premium plates here so we have not fallen into this on a blue Monday.
A top tip though should you consider trying it again- do not wait and see what comes around on the conveyor. If you pro-actively ask for other dishes they will make and bring them to you at the blue plate price.
So how about making yourself feel better- go to yo- you know the protocol now- and look at the menu for some pink plates etc you fancy and ask them to make them for you. Check when ordering that you get the blue plate price, then you can re- coup losses from your previous unfortunate visit

booler

Eating Sushi? I would be more worried about this.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Dangers-of-Sushi---What-Are-the-Dangers-and-Risks-of-Eating-Sushi?&id=1984026

mad_dr

helcat26 wrote: »

I am sorry yiu did not enjoy your meal.
We do not get premium plates here so we have not fallen into this on a blue Monday.
A top tip though should you consider trying it again- do not wait and see what comes around on the conveyor. If you pro-actively ask for other dishes they will make and bring them to you at the blue plate price.
So how about making yourself feel better- go to yo- you know the protocol now- and look at the menu for some pink plates etc you fancy and ask them to make them for you. Check when ordering that you get the blue plate price, then you can re- coup losses from your previous unfortunate visit

Err - perhaps I'm missing something but this doesn't sound right to me...

On Blue Monday each place setting has a paper menu which shows all of the blue plate dishes that are included in the offer. During this time, the conveyor will ONLY have blue plates (unless your restaurant does premium yellow dishes too as per the OP's above)

You'll find that the blue plate dishes are normally on coloured plates that usually cost more than £2.40 which is why it's a good deal.

You can ask the server to bring you any of the dishes that are on the Blue Monday menu and they'll all be charged at £2.40. Sometimes the server will get them made fresh when you specifically request them, sometimes, if there's something you've asked for already on the belt, they may just pick one up and bring it directly to you. So if you prefer hot dishes, best to ask for them "hot" to drop the hint that you want one made fresh. If you stick to this rule, you'll only pay £2.40 per dish.

However, if you want to order a dish that's NOT included in the blue plate menu (Chicken Teriyaki, for example), you can still ask for it but it'll be made fresh for you and will arrive on the normal colour plate you'd expect it to. For example, if you order a Chicken Teriyaki, it'll arrive on an orange plate and you'll pay £3.50 for it.

Perhaps I misunderstood the post above but didn't want people to think you could order anything you want from the full menu and only pay £2.40 for it - you won't!

mad_dr

booler wrote: »

Eating Sushi? I would be more worried about this.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Dangers-of-Sushi---What-Are-the-Dangers-and-Risks-of-Eating-Sushi?&id=1984026

No sources quoted and no empirical testing carried out in that article. Not exactly convincing reading but thanks for posting. I've never heard of wasabi being used specifically to kill parasites either and would be surprised if that's true. There may be some incidental benefits of wasabi versus parasites but the fact that wasabi is by no means mandatory and usually added immediately before consumption makes me sceptical.

I'm by no means a sushi guru but I do know that the freezing process used by reputable sushi vendors (down to minus 60 centigrade in many cases which is FAR colder than your freezer at home) is designed to ensure that parasites are killed (source: a whacking great, boring piece of EU legislation: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:139:0055:0205:EN:PDF)

So when it comes to sashimi, frozen is exactly what you're looking for, for once!

Everything in moderation, of course.

booler

I had read about the freezing process being used to kill off nasties but I just linked to one of the first sites that came up on my search to illustrate this. I did the search because I had watched a TV documentary about this a couple of years ago and it put me off sushi for life.

I appreciate that there are safe processes and procedures in place but then that also applied to Tesco burgers.