YO! London Selfridges — Restaurant in London

👉TL;DR: I’ve dined at 100+ sushi restaurants in 5 countries, and YO! Sushi at Selfridges served the worst tasting food I’ve ever had. Environment and staff are totally fine.

My expectations eating ethnic cuisine in its nonnative country are always kept low for obvious reasons. YO! Sushi set the bar for Japanese food lower than I can almost describe; it was such a pungently foul experience that I almost wish I had food poisoning to purge what I had put in my stomach.

I say this at the risk of sounding like a raging Karen. However, this criticism against YO! Sushi was written for your sake—not mine. I should also note here that the establishment’s environment, staff, and table gave my girlfriend and I no trouble. In fact, the taste of our vinegar-saturated shitake ramen was tempered by the kind disposition of our server. Neither of us complained publicly about the food because we had already paid for it, but I hope this review will make you stop and consider supporting an alternative to this restaurant.

The popcorn shrimp was delicious, steaming hot, and a delight. This is the end of all the good things I have to say about their food. (No offense to the chef. I blame upper management for not seeming to have QA on food freshness and flavor.)

Let’s get into it.

If you’ve ever had the miserable experience of grabbing cold, gas-station sushi for a road trip, you’d find yourself delighted to grab said sushi after having dined at YO! Sushi. We ordered two different types of salmon rolls, only to discover a mushy, stale flavor in each one. Fortunately, the salmon nigiri was somewhat fresh and only smelled a little bit like wet towel. The specialty rolls were entirely hit-or-miss. The best of the four we ordered was the chicken katsu roll, which was still an offense to “specialty” as a category. If you’re surprised at how bad I think their food is, trust me. I was too. I can’t remember the last time I posted a food review anywhere.

Anyway—as I mentioned earlier, we also ordered their shitake ramen in hopes it would redeem the sushi we had. It didn’t. If you’re curious, I suppose it could best be described as “the cook accidentally spilled it in the rubbish bin and attempted to recover it.” At least they decorated it impeccably.

I’ll stop here. At this point, I’m not even as disappointed as I am impressed for this abysmal excuse for a restaurant managed to stay in business so long.

I bought an ice cream on the way home to wash out the putrid taste of YO! Sushi....

When I was younger, probably a good twenty years ago, I used to go to Yo! Sushi all the time, specifically the one in Clerkenwell (no longer there) It was great. The food was so good, the restaurants were always quite buzzy, and the staff making the sushi were often Japanese. I look back on those years fondly, as at the time, it felt authentic (I had not at that point visited Japan!) and affordable for me at that stage in my life. Fast forward to July 2025, and I find myself in Selfridges, at lunchtime. Now, I haven't been to a Yo! Sushi in many years. Why? Because honestly, my tastes have changed and there is no point in hiding it - they have become more refined. Hardly surprising since I live in London and it's full of incredible places to eat. I like good quality sushi (Chisou is my favourite). So it's not fair to compare, as the price points are entirely different. However, the food at Yo! Sushi Selfridges was absysmal. The quality was dreadful, the choice was poor and it all* tasted more or less the same, which was pretty tasteless. Even the ginger was tasteless, and that is extremely hard to get wrong. One of the things that was incredibly off-putting for me, was to see the people making the sushi. These were not skilled people, with a passion for sushi making. I was also seated right in front of them, with constant water taps going, far too much activity to make it enjoyable and seeing people wearing hair nets is unpleasant. I lost my appetite after just 4* small plates, got the bill and left. So no, not for me. And that's not because I don't like cheap eats, on the contrary, I continue to to go to other places I've frequented for over 20 years that serve great quality food at amazing prices, but Yo! Sushi is poor, and I'm truly amazed that Selfridges share the same building. Maybe I'm missing something, but I won't be going back to find out. Luckily Selfridges share their space with Borough 22 who sell the most amazing donuts. I bought 4 on the way out so my day improved...

Update April 2023 Oh dear oh dear. Yo sushi... what has happened to you? When you first opened you were great. And now... oh dear.... here is my updated review visiting the branch at Selfridges (you would think it would be the best given its location in one of London's prime retail stores!)

Yo Sushi has sadly pushed its prices up to the point of being unreasonable. It is no longer value for money and the standards and quality of the sushi has gone downhill in recent years. Sushi rolls are cut unevenly and are generally quite small and expensive (considering for the most part you get two rolls on a plate). The staff are quite young, inexperienced and not very attentive to diners' needs. I would really avoid any Yo Sushi in London, I'm very sorry to say. And whilst I see customer service is doing a great job of responding to poor reviews, presumably offering vouchers to diners (I don't know as I haven't responded) what really needs to happen is that Yo needs to return to offering the diner great value, high quality, decent portion size and a great level of service. Customers do not want to feel ripped off for poor quality, overpriced food. Until the model improves, I will not be back and cannot recommend Yo Sushi to any local or traveler visiting London.

Downgrading from 3 stars to 1 star.

Previous review_____

Convenient sushi on a conveyor belt. Food is fresh. Whilst not a first stop for sushi lovers, it is quick and decent if you happens to be craving a sushi fix. Gets a bit pricey these days and I’ve noticed price increases too. Water should really be free and is now a cheeky £1.50 for the joy of...