YO! Manchester Selfridges Trafford — Restaurant in Trafford

Imagine paradise. Imagine it as a place on a map. In your mind, drop a pin there… then start walking. Walk away from it as far as you possibly can in the universe you’ve just created. Then drop another pin. That pin is as far away from perfect as you can get… that pin, if you will, is hell.

Now, again imagine you tap that pin. Yes… you guessed it. That pin is Yo Sushi at the Trafford Center.

Only worse… because going to hell at least has a sense of justice to it. You end up in hell because you did something.

I ended up in Yo Sushi, the real incarnation of hell, because my kids wanted to go there. That seems like a harsh punishment.

What makes it hell is that in no way does it live up to any of its promises. This is meant to be luxury, exotic, flavoursome… frankly Yo Sushi should have a licence from the FCA to arrange personal loans and mortgages to pay the bill. Their food is so expensive that it is perfectly reasonable to expect it to cure cancer, reverse male pattern baldness, or serve as the world heavyweight champion of aphrodisiacs…

But instead, what you get is to wait in a long queue in a shop that’s too hot for it to be good for anyone - another way it is very much like hell. You are sat in grubby, dirty, dilapidated surroundings, and even though I came with small children, you are sat at a bar that in no way lends itself to supervising kids.

To the best of my knowledge there is no way to summon waiting staff - I understood they did not use the app and had to be summoned. Only I assume they had to be summoned by telephone, by email, even perhaps by telepathy, because none were around to be summoned by more traditional means.

Finally, when my seven year old had got sick of waiting, he went to find one, in a moment I found out about a split second too late, because he was next to me at a bar, not in front of me at a table.

When the server was to be found, she knew about as much about the menu as I do about open heart surgery (read: I am not a cardio thoracic surgeon). Couldn’t guide me through the dishes, couldn’t tell me how the menu had changed, couldn’t suggest any alternatives. It was, almost exactly, like talking to a hand puppet. Only hand puppets are fun. This was like putting a knitting needle into my ear.

So, with my kids having eaten four plates alone. Four small plates. With pennies worth of food on them, I got sick of the shoddy experience, baulked at the idea of having my pocket picked to be treated like.a simpleton and left. The cost for those four plates? A few pence shy of £18.

So in short - I would not recommend this food venue to anyone - unless I bitterly hated them, because I’d caught them in bed with my wife, after driving my car, and having ingratiated themselves to my friends. Then and only then could I loathe someone enough to recommend eating at this establishment.

For less dramatic occasions - give it a dramatic swerve. Your bank manager and your sensibilities will thank you.

Yo Sushi solicited me to email them on Tripadvisor to resolve this. After asking me to send them the review again and then asking for proof of purchase, they decided not to refund me. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF WASTING MY TIME THEN? Absolute muppets. Basically the death knell for Yo Sushi. I hate the way they do business, I hate their ripoff prices, I hate how grubby and run down their places are, I hate how eating there makes me...

Well since we had an hour and a half to spare before my childs play session at play factore we thought we'd go to yo sushi the queue was massive it was boiling hot in there we contemplated leaving the queue several times but this was meant to be part of her birthday treat. We kept seeing several empty seats but they were not getting filled and the queue was not moving it was a form of torture really by the time we got to the front of the queue it was time for the 2 hour play session to start and i hoped we would finally get seated soon so we could make it to the play session before it finishes. But it was still another 15-20 mins before we were seated in chairs that look like theyve seen better days. Once there it was great. I mean it was slow service if you ordered food and drink and no one explained the system to me i had to ask if the '20' sticker on the dome on top of the dish means its 20 quid and they finally explained no the pricing is colour coded accorded to the dish and handed me a menu which i hadnt been given before. I have anxiety it makes me anxious to not know the prices of things until its time to pay and would have preferred to pay upfront but as this wasnt possible i had to use my calculator on my phone to monitor how much it all was and to tell my child to limit herself. Then they added a service charge to the end anyway. What service? They werent seating people in time or explaining the system definitely acted like i was bugging them by asking questions all the time- at the end i literally asked 3 different employees how im meant to pay and they walked right past me without acknowledging me like i never said anything and we ended up being late to the play session due to slow service but its not a low rating because the actual food was good and id recommend. I played it safe with prawn crackers miso soup and mochi and really enjoyed it. Really like the moving conveyors. If i had been seated quickly and explained the system and it wasnt so hot it probably would have been a 5 star review from me. Also wish they had drinks like ramune my child gets it from the yo section at tesco so i assumed theyd have them in the restaurant too...

We visited Yo Sushi last Friday for date night, our first time back in a while, and we were excited to return to see if the experience still lived up to our memories. As always, the restaurant had its conveyor belt with a variety of sushi selections passing by, giving us the option to either order with the waitress or pick directly from the belt. We ended up doing both, eager to try some of our favourites and a few new items as well.

We ordered eight pieces of the Dynamite Roll, filled with creamy avocado, cucumber, and carrot, topped with crispy onions and spicy salmon. We also picked out the Popcorn Shrimp, perfectly tempura-battered and drizzled with sweet shiro miso and chili sauce. From the belt, we grabbed four pieces of the Popcorn Prawn Roll, a refreshing blend of smashed avocado rolled in chives, topped with a spicy kimchi sauce and crispy popcorn prawn. The Yo Fries were a nice side, Japanese-style fries with sriracha mayo and sprinkled with sesame and aonori seaweed, and we rounded out our sushi with eight pieces of the Crunch California Roll, made with surimi and avocado, topped with mayo, teriyaki, and crunchy onion. For drinks, we kept it simple with a Mogu Mogu Mango and a Sprite Zero.

While the sushi was enjoyable, we couldn’t understand why the prices had gone up so much since our last visit, especially since very little had changed apart from a few new items on the menu. In fact, some of the dishes were as expensive as what we’d expect from a fine dining restaurant in the city center, which felt excessive given the casual dining experience.

Another disappointing aspect was the lack of cleanliness throughout the restaurant. The table and chairs felt grimy, the floor had visible crumbs, and the menus were so sticky that we didn’t want to touch them. It gave the impression that upkeep was not a priority.

Overall, while the sushi itself was good, the high prices and cleanliness issues took away from the experience. It’s a fun place to pick and sample dishes, but the steep prices and lack of cleanliness make it difficult to...