Sushi Go Round at YO! Sushi, Short Hills

YO! Sushi, a fast-casual sushi restaurant at the Short Hills Mall, serves sashimi, rolls, salads and desserts on a Japanese ‘kaiten.'

Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. It was not easy watching the different colored bowls filled with sashimi, nigiri, rolls, salads and desserts pass in front of us on a Japanese “kaiten,” or conveyor belt, and not grab one of each at YO! Sushi, a newly opened fast-casual sushi restaurant.

We sat at a high top for two, but there is mostly counter style seating. Chopsticks, a stack of napkins, wasabi, low-sodium soy sauce and ginger were on the table. Be forewarned. The different colored bowls/plates are not removed from the table because each color signifies a different price and is added up when you are finished eating to determine the bill. The table can get crowded.

This is how it works. You can opt to take the food off the conveyor belt or push the help button at your table to summon your waiter, who will take your order for the hot food.

From the kitchen we ordered spicy seafood udon that was swimming with shrimp, salmon, calamari, zucchini, red pepper and udon noodles. The fish was tender, not rubbery or overcooked, and the broth spicy. Fried vegetable gyoza (dumplings) were crisp and served with a soy and vinegar sauce. A spicy harusame sauce with ginger and scallions was scrumptious on the thinly sliced fried eggplant. I would love to recreate this dish at home.

From the belt, we picked a kaiso salad with seaweed edamame beans and shredded carrots in a delicious spicy sauce; a salmon selection containing three salmon sashimi, two salmon nigiri and two salmon maki, all of which were fresh tasting. The two disappointments were the tough seared beef nigiri and the bland and visually unappealing Japanese black sesame flavored pancake with red bean filling and raspberry sauce.

Everything is made fresh in the open kitchen and the food is time coded so that it can be pulled off the belt; raw items after 2 hours and everything else after 3 hours.

You can eat inexpensively here. Plate rates range from $3 to $7. Although we were invited to a press dinner our bill would have been $30 for two, and we were stuffed. We were told that the average bill was $19.

The waiters wear blue T-shirt’s with Japanese writing on the back which says, “Warm Clothes, Full Meal”

Yo! Sushi
Short Hills Mall
Short Hills
201-389-8137

rosie1
Seaweed salad.

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Salmon sampler.

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Udon soup.
Photos courtesy of Lowell Saferstein

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