Yokohama Japanese Cuisine

Yokohama Japanese Cuisine is an all you can eat restaurant that has been opened for approximately one year now.  It's fancy interior along with its fancy menu and selection process on "ipads" offers a uniqueness of this restaurant compared to all the other all you can eat restaurants.  We had about eight of us who decided to venture out that evening and with three kids we required a long table.  We of course had to make reservations and notified the restaurant with our special arrangements.

Once we were settled into our seats, we were given one ipad for the whole table.  On this device, it listed all the different types of dishes that they had to offer including a picture of each of the selected items.  The device was easy to use with a tap or two of the finger to indicate how much of each dish you had wanted. Since it was the weekend, the price per person that evening was $25.99 with 2 pieces of raw oysters included in that price.

We ordered a whole pile of food from the menu.  From sushi to sashimi, to udons and ribs, to crab legs and tempura, we took full advantage of the all you can eat process.  When the dishes were brought to our table, the portions looked a tad small.  For example, there were only two crab legs per plate and we had ordered like 8 of them.  The crab legs appeared to have little meat in them and the legs themselves were not big at all. I always wondered that if one knew that a table had ordered so much of one item, why not put it all on one big plate.  Eight different sets of plates arrived and it wasn't as if the plates were completely covered in the crab legs and to place that on the table that wasn't that big that big to begin with, space unfortunately was certainly of an issue.

Truthfully the food itself was overall average at best.  There were no spectacular dishes or dishes that people at my table really desired or wanted.  The chefs do get props for trying to enlighten their dishes with fancy designs and art work.  The sashimi and sushi were simple dishes with the usual tuna and sashimi.  As mentioned before the crab legs were small with little meat in them.  The ribs tasted good but were somehow  cold by the time it arrived at our table. One of the better dishes that was brought out to the table was the eel pizza. A bit of roe sprinkled on top of the eel and then placed on top of what I will call a sushi sandwich.  The combination looked somewhat appealing and it did capture all the right tastes in this dish. 

Sashimi

The most interesting dish I found was the tuna tartar.  Often at times this dish is served with the tuna raw in the middle and nicely seared on the outside.  The one they brought us was shaped like a dome which was fine however one could not make heads or tails with it soon afterwards.  It was thick with rice covering three-quarters of the bottom and the top was covered with what almost appeared to be "tuna spread".  It tasted like tuna however it was probably one of the first times I had it this way.  It didn't appear to be very appealing as many of the table said they were glad that this was all you can eat and not a la carte.

Tuna Tartar

 My other pet peeve of the night was that one would think with the "new" technology in the method of selecting of the food with the ipads as opposed to paper, one would think that every single item we selected would have arrived.  However, this was not the case as parts of our selections were missing each time we ordered.  Having said that, other than a nice visual effect, there was really no advantage with going with the ipad method of selection.

Octopus

The biggest pet peeve of the night was the fact that after sitting there for 2 hours or so, and not until we asked the server about it, that we found out that there was in fact no raw oysters to be served that evening. For us that was disappointing because the menu clearly outlined it and if they were going to charge us a higher price on the weekends because of it, then we would expect to get the oysters or at least a fair substitute for it.  By virtual of no compensation, it was almost like a money grab.  Charge more money for the same selection of food as that of the weekday.  When we asked the waitress about it, she actually snapped back at told us it was not her fault and that we should take it up with upper management.

Overall, as you can see, the service was so-so and the food was average at best.  Despite all the glitz and glamour, it was really difficult to really say a whole lot of great things about the restaurant itself. Hard to say whether I will make a return visit to this place anytime soon.  Will probably wait a while and see if conditions improve.  Overall I give it a 2.5 out of 5.

Yokohama Japanese Cuisine
7050 Warden Avenue
Markham, Ontario

905-940-8818