YouYou Japanese Bistro — Restaurant in Nashua

YouYou Japanese Bistro is somewhat of a hidden gem, tucked away at the back of a mid-size plaza just off Broad Street in Nashua. On a couple of recent visits I came away thoroughly impressed. The first visit was solo, and I sat at the sushi bar. The next visit, with a couple friends, we sat at a high top in the main bar as you walk in. Both times felt very welcoming, and the atmosphere was buzzing with a near full house. The servers were very friendly and helpful; food and drinks were presented quite promptly. The Mai Tais are excellent here. For the first visit, I had an outstandingly fresh Sashimi Sampler For One, along with the Roast Pork Ramen which was quite flavorful; well balanced and not too salty. For the second visit, I had the excellent Seafood Diablo. Many plates labeled Diablo (“devil”) are somewhat spicy, but the use of apricot in this particular dish renders it a bit on the sweet side; nothing devilish about it, and that’s just fine as I thoroughly enjoyed this meal. I also gave the Tempura Oysters a try but found them to be a bit meh with very little oyster taste; mushy inside and crunchy tempura outside. There are a couple of Designer Rolls that are not on the menu, but were suggested by a server. Of these, I went with the outstanding Austin Roll as I tend to gravitate toward anything that contains mango. This one is a beauty topped in a layer of avocado and a slice of jalapeño. The menu here is amazingly diverse. Highly...

TL;DR Stick to the Japanese cuisine and you cannot go wrong. I wish I ordered the tempura dinner. Be prepared to wait for your food. Customer service is attentive and friendly.

Full review: My friends and I came here on a Friday night at 6:30 PM and were promptly seated. We ordered the Japanese Vegetable Pancake to share, which was topped with a glaze and had a side of Sriracha. It was dense and not very flavorful. It did, however, have a wonderful crunch on the crust. Because of what I ordered, I also received a miso soup.

I ordered the Ok Dol Bi Bim Bab, a Korean rice dish that is served with marinated beef, carrots, sautéed greens, zucchini, and a sunny side up egg. The bowl is blistering hot so that the rice can get nice and crisp. It's served with hot sauce on the side, that you can have the server mix in table side. If you want the Kim chee, you'll need to request it. Overall the dish was okay, and not very flavorful, even with the hot sauce. I did like how crispy the rice got and the flavor of the beef, though it was a little tough and dry for my taste.

It can be hard for restaurants to do a bunch of different cuisines at once, as the menu served Japanese, Korean, Thai, and some European fusion. If the restaurant solely focused on Japanese food, it would gain stronger reviews.

Customer service was attentive and pleasant, though the food took quite long to get...

I used to love this place but I had a string of just really weird and uncomfortable experiences that will have me staying away.

Used to love their food but several instances of things just tasting really of or being uncooked but I gave them a second and third chance. Service started to get really slow.

Last straw was when I took my girlfriend there and we spent over 3 hours waiting for our food. They brought us the wrong food twice within that time period and our waitress was getting really close to us and it was beyond uncomfortable. About two hours in I tried to get our check for our drinks so we could leave and the waitress would just avoid our section completely. I got up to ask her for our check and just walked away from me mid sentence and vanished for basically forever. I asked a food runner if we could get our check to leave and they said our waitress would be over soon. Well, that didn't happen she finally showed up with our food almost an hour later and my ramen was just a few noodles in broth that was barely more than water with a ton of raw cabbage on top. the PadThai might have been even worse.

I have no idea what happened since their food used to be really good but I'd rather save myself the weirdness of going...