YO! Bluewater — Restaurant in Dartford

June 2024 UPDATE Yo Sushi (aka Yo!) have relocated to one of the commercial retails shop units within Bluewater - I visited yesterday with my adult son - as we entered to new restaurant a staff member Antonio rudely instructed saying ’wait at the sign’ in a stiff tone as he pointed to a sign that was impossible for us to see from the angle we entered at. He seriously nearly made me just walk away - unfortunately he has zero skill in customer service and clearly does not know how to make customers feel welcome nor does he have any skills or ability in customer service. So I bit my lip and went to the waiting position. We were greeted by Lucy (who served us previously at the location before this one). She smiled and was super friendly (the polar opposite to Oh No Antonio). She was helpful and attentive and I give her 10/10 for customer service. One small gripe was that we asked for cold drinks half way through the meal and these were slow in arriving - after a while I stood up and walked to the drinks area where I found Lucy arriving back there with a bucket of ice. When I questioned where our drinks were, she spoke to Antonio saying ‘ Why didn’t you take their drinks over Antonio?’ So Oh Dear Antonio created the second bad experience for us at the restaurant. So the food was good (8/10) and as we finished our meal Antonio approached (which I found odd because Lucy had been serving us) and asked in a stern unfriendly tone ‘can I get you anything ‘ and when we said no thanks he said - ‘the soups are free’. The soups are not free but you can have as many refills as you want that I knew already having been to Yo! multiple times previously. So strike 3 for Antonio for an unfriendly poorly thought through engagement with customers - I give Antonio 1/10 for showing up to work. I have run my own business and staff are everything for a business because without them you have no business. In fairness I would recommend a comprehensive training course for Antonio to give him a chance ( if it was my business however I would relieve him of his position - he just seemed hacked off with the world like he did not want to be there). THE REST of the review that follows is an older historic experience……. I have visited this restaurant many times and restaurants management has changed recently and it is very good indeed. I recommend highly the salt and chilli squid that is fresh lightly battered squid pieces fried and topped with chopped fresh red chilli and fresh chopped spring onions - it’s delicious. I also highly recommend the Katsu curry dishes - there is chicken, prawn or pumpkin katsu curry options - I tend to go for the chicken and thus is a piece of chicken flattened then breadcrumbs and fried then served on top of rice in a bowl with a dollop of curry sauce - it is topped with Japanese pickles if you order the larger bowl - I love that dish. A notable accompaniment is the pink pickled ginger and the wasabi paste. The pickled ginger and wasabi paste are traditional accompaniments to Japanese food and the wasabi has a spicy kick very similar in intensity to strong English mustard while the ginger has a very sweet taste with the heat of the ginger in the background. I also suggest ordering a miso soup as this is also traditional and helps wash everything down - this is refillable and you only pay once so it’s good value. You should try a couple of the street food dishes such as the Korean fried chicken and the Japanese fried chicken - these are very tasty. Every single staff member we interacted with were professional polite and very well trained and the manager was excellent dealing with one small gripe that he resolved promptly efficiently and very fairly in a professional manner. Full layout and user friendly design this is one of the best YO! Sushi’s you can visit. If you find this review helpful please consider following me - I will follow you back...

Awful experience. First visit and last time. Will not return. Do not recommend.

We arrived at 2:10 (there was no food on the belt) were told by this blonde women who seemed to be the manager that it would take 20 mins to make more sushi so came back again in 20 mins. We returned in 20 mins.

A different Oriental staff told us the restaurant is closed and no more sushi will be served. I told him we were told by the blonde (who now was sitting down not sure what she was doing?) to come back in 20 minutes because it would take 20 minutes to make more sushi.

The staff was baffled (so did we), and said he needed to go talk to this blonde to check the story she told us earlier. He came back to us and said he will take us to the table with the menus and chopsticks in his hands.

He told us to order food from the menus and scan the QR code and we could have anything still on the belt (there was hardly anything virtually nothing during the 20 mins we went away to wait for them ‘making more sushi’)

reading from the reviews here what others are saying the ‘conveyor belt’ sushi system does not exist anymore which is wrong. Why leave it there when it doesn’t work to serve any food.

We ordered some food from the menu via the app. The food is awful. In the seafood ramen, it was the usual chinese egg noodles not even ramen, the broth is translucent but tasteless, two piece of salmon and some shrimp. I would be able to make a tastier version by using instant noodle from Nissin brand adding some home cooked salmon etc. anyway not worth the time to even discuss further.

The tuna sushi looks awful. The cut was small and rest on top of the machine made sushi rice lifelessly (yes we know the sushi rice was shaped by the sushi machine for many years knowing it wouldn’t be possible to train sushi chef staff which will take a decade like what they did in Japan. So machine made sushi rice it is) but the cut of on the fish looks amateur.

The deep fried pumpkin was the only item that tasted the same but it was out of a bag of ready made frozen food which we all know. There’s no cooking skill involved here just reheat by deep frying again.

In short it was awful customer communication which I began to think the staff possibly is not in the right mind to tell us it would take them 20 more minutes to make more sushi but in fact there was no new sushi being made but to send us away hoping we would never return and forgot about our lunch.

I really think the blonde woman who seems to be running the restaurant should be sacked. A more experienced restaurant manager should be hired and the whole kitchen cooks if there are any left should also be sacked. They had no clue what they’re making at all. I’m not even comparing them to the standard in ‘conveyor belt sushi’ restaurants in Japan (I just came back from Japan in May), and nothing to do with the race/skin colour of the cooks, they simply do not know how to cook noodle soup, and never even trained and completed test on sushi making by Yo sushi.

There are other branches we went before and this was by far the worst one we came across.

(Please don’t bother to copy and paste the same customer feedback used in every feedback again and again here. Just sort the kitchen staff and the manager out. That’s all you need to do and focus on. Not lip services.)

Not even one...

Such a poor and pointless restaurant NOW. my 5 year old son and wife wanted to go as they like the novelty convey system. had to queue for about 20 minutes, which is fine, especially on a Saturday (20/11/21 @ 6pm), and also because of this whole 1m distance seating plan (which i thought we was past), there were gaps everywhere but they were spreading the customers out. that isn't where things went wrong. after waiting 20 minutes, we was seated, told we had to order via the app (which is fine), new colour coded system, red is when nothing has happened, amber food being processed and green food is on the conveyor belt and ready to take. keeping in mind YO SUSHI is a conveyor belt system novelty business, they have taken the idea of food spinning around on the conveyor belt to click click click online and your order arrives. the whole point of YO SUSHI is this conveyor belt system where you get to choose what you want to eat off a spinning belt. this no longer exists here in Bluewater. placed the order and paid online, and received email confirmation. food arrives quick which was good, but I'm glad it was quick as we really wanted to get in and get out as soon as possible. my order came up to just over £25.00, didn't order a lot as the experience was no longer there, ordered: gyoza, salmon yaki (6), chicken katsu curry, seaweed, coke and two tap waters. the salmon yaki looked like it was made from a kids play set, rice looked like it was mushed up and plated, gyoza were ok, but the chicken katsu curry was plated on a small sushi plate, for £7 I could have got a proper full meal from a fast food restaurant. I'm sure the katsu curry was a substantial meal for one adult before and now just enough for a small child. word of advice check the size of the plate before ordering. once my son had finished, i couldn't wait to get out of there and order fried chicken from a well known chicken shop. just to add salt to wound, I received an email from YO SUSHI asking for a review an hour after our experience, I clicked on the link to try and share my experience and to my surprise the link doesn't work... (yumpingo-reviews.com) well done Yo Sushi and I didn't think you could top the poor in-restaurant experience. not in a hurry...