YO! Sushi in Paramus, a Cool New Concept for Eating Sushi – Review

by Alice Magdziak • June 15, 2015 • Bergen, Food, Taste of the East • Comments (0) • 3277

We’ve always been fascinated by the conveyor belt sushi places we’ve seen on TV. There’s finally one in New Jersey and it’s fantastic. Fresh sushi, delicious hot entrees and appetizers, a great staff and a fun conveyor belt!

We got invited to try out YO! Sushi and headed over to the Garden State Plaza in Paramus as soon as we could to check out the coolest new sushi place around.

Located by the Carousel, movie theaters and Macy’s, YO! Sushi looks amazing from the outside and keeps on looking cool upon entering. Everything is set up in white with bold pops of blue. It looks and feels exactly like one of the places we’ve seen on TV from Tokyo—very modern and clean. The 2,200-plus square-foot restaurant seats about 75 patrons.

You have a choice of counter seating that faces part of the 280-foot conveyor belt (called the “kaiten”) or booth seating with the conveyor belt to your side. Eating at the counter means you can watch the sushi chefs at work and they’re really friendly!

Our server, Tiara Fuller, was very helpful while we were picking out our menu items and explained everything we needed. Restaurant Manager, Stephen Parris, was also extremely friendly and was happy to be bringing this cool concept to New Jersey.

Food comes by on the conveyor belt on color-coded dishes ranging from $3 plates which are light green to $7 plates which are yellow. The menu at the table lays out all the colors and prices for you.

You don’t have to eat from the conveyor belt if you feel nervous picking stuff up when you aren’t exactly sure what it is. There’s a full menu of items which you can order from your server and that will be brought directly to your table. The menu also details all the plates that you will see traveling around the kaiten.

To start off, there’s a $3.00 bowl of miso soup with unlimited refills!

We tried quite a few hot appetizers and salads that don’t come around the kaiten. The gyoza below were perfectly crispy on the outside and moist and delicious on the inside. Gyoza come with chicken, shrimp or vegetable fillings.

These were more of our favorite appetizers below. At the top, Eggplant Salad which was lightly fried eggplant slices in harusame sauce, fresh ginger and scallions served cold. I could have eaten this entire plate it was so delicious! Tuna Tataki on the right on the bottom and Kimchee Chicken Salad on the left round out this picture of amazing appetizers.

There was also a special appetizer of deep fried soft shell crabs that manager Stephen recommended. Yum! Go soon to get this limited time dish.

The conveyor belt has mainly hand rolls, nigiri and some fruit plates for dessert. Anyone who’s had sushi a few times should be able to identify classics like spicy rolls with the zesty orange mayo on top, salmon nigiri and tuna rolls.

All the little domes on the conveyor plates are time stamped so you can tell they’re fresh. This one below was going to be good until 10:00pm so we knew it was going to be perfectly fresh at 8:00pm when we were there. Everything we tasted from the kaiten seemed like it was just made.

The full menu also has sashimi, maki, hand rolls, curries, noodle dishes, vegetarian options like salads and vegetable tempura as well as desserts including Japanese-style Dorayaki pancakes, Mochi ice cream and fresh fruit.

There are quite a few groups of people that we think would really have fun here: people who like to try different rolls by seeing them go by their tables; couples on a date night who will enjoy talking about what’s going by; diners who want to eat sushi like tapas; and groups that include both sushi eaters and non-sushi eaters who will appreciate the wide-ranging menu.

There’s also a to-go case of sushi items at the front of the restaurant for mall shoppers who want to take some of this great sushi home for a quick meal.

YO! Sushi already operates 87 restaurants worldwide. The first YO! Sushi opened in London in 1997 and now has 74 U.K. locations, two in Ireland, two in Norway, one in Denmark and six in the Middle East. The YO! Sushi opening in Paramus sets the stage for the company’s expansion into the United States. Another YO! Sushi will open later in 2015 in The Mall at Short Hills. There’s also a Sarasota, Florida location open and another coming to Tampa later this year.

Check out all the pictures from our visit to YO! Sushi in Paramus and go try out this really cool concept soon: