Yama Izakaya & Sushi — Restaurant in Plano

This place has various locations, and each have slightly different menus but I find this one to be the best overall. The sushi here i think is average and worth skipping and saving your money on, but they have many more authentic and traditional Japanese dishes you will not see often on Japanese menus around here that tend to focus solely on sushi and ramen. I think the varied menu to try new things is worth going alone. I have tried just about everything in the menu and most items are tasty. Their Takoyaki and robata grilled squid are tasty, I like their chicken gizzard skewers (the chicken heart ones need some salt but easy fix) and I love the Takowasabi which is raw octopus in salted wasabi. It's like wasabi peas but with raw seafood instead of the peas. My favorite item is the Motsuni, which is miso soup but with the edition of beef stomach and daikon. It's surprisingly light considering most stomach based dishes tend to be oily and heavy.

There are a few items I did not care for. The robata grilled beef tongue was nothing special, and not worth the price tag. The liver and Nara, which is chicken livers stir fried with bean sprouts and green onions fell flat. I thought it was gonna be a dry stir fry like Mongolian beef, but it was soaked in a thin white sauce and some sesame oil. The liver chunks were huge thus making them super dry. I think thinner slices of liver stir fried over super high heat with a dab of oil and a small spoon of sauce with the vegetables tossed in at the end would have been amazing. It was just over cooked, soggy and unappetizing. Also be careful of the Ankimo. It's steamed Monkfish liver pate with fresh seaweed and ponzu. It taste like SUPER strong canned tuna. While I enjoy the taste, I imagine if you don't like canned tuna or fishy taste, you will probably gag upon eating this. If you do like super strong canned tuna taste, make sure you get the ponzu sauce on the side because it is INTENSE. It almost has a perfume like quality so it works best with TINY drops as opposed to douse all over your dish. So you hav been warned about this dish. I enjoy it but I'm not sure how others react.

So overall if you want a taste of more traditional Japanese dishes this is a good place to try it out. Skip the sushi, try new dishes and sake sampling and enjoy. As I mentioned each location has a slightly different menu (last i check maybe it different due to COVID), so research which menu has what do you can sample all kinds of Japanese culinary creations instead of the same old Sushi, ramen...

You ever lost your appetite because something just disgusting or annoying happened to you so you don’t even want to eat your food anymore no matter how hungry/much you were craving that food?? Well, that’s exactly what happened to my family and me at this Yama location.

Long story short, DO NOT GO HERE because the service is absolutely absurd!!!! If you do go here, you better double AND triple check your receipt because they will charge you for items you did NOT eat!!!!

Right off the bat, service was horrible. Throughout the night, the waitress was rude and lacked proper work ethic, but I blew it off because I just wanted to eat my sashimi and call it a day. But when I saw my receipt included multiple items on there that we did not eat, and it was wayyyy more than it was suppose to be….that was the cherry on top. The only reason why we did not leave this Yama location and go to the Legacy location is because by the time we would’ve gotten to the other spot, it would’ve been too late to dine in. But guess what, after we paid, we made a to-go order right when we got into our car to pick up at the Legacy location because this one didn’t even have the items we wanted - only Legacy offered the extended menu like the Chinese Delight selections. So if you want that, do NOT go here! Save your time and go to Yama on Legacy. You’ll get better food, more options, and great service. I hope the manager and waitress read this review because I surely told them they need to revisit their customer guidelines. I wish I could’ve recorded the conversation the waitress were having with my family and me. Straight up RUDE. I also informed the other staff at the Legacy location so the owners can have a team huddle and see where areas of improvement may occur because having a franchise with one location being better than the other seems to be the trend nowadays. I just hope this Yama will do better AND be better. They’re lucky their sashimi was good because that’s why they’re getting 2 stars instead of 1. If it wasn’t good, I would’ve...

I've been coming to this place for almost 6 years since moving to Plano. Not once had an issue other than they take a long time on food during peak hours. It had been about a few months since coming and when I walked in, the atmosphere felt a little different but still familiar. Overall, the food was great as always, anyways, AARON, our server was nice and tried to attend us when he hadnt forgotten about us. We waited at least 20mins for just our drinks. Didnt hold it against him. We asked for our check, paid, left a tip. As I was putting my two year old in the car and he was crying because it was late, aaron walks out to my car and asks me if the service was an issue. I said no. He said, "what is this" points at the tip... I said it's 10%. he states that there is a card fee they are charged for, and that the table was left a mess which he has to clean up. I said ok, we didn't know that and that he would only be getting a few dollars from it. Then he goes on to say, not to ever come back and that we are horrible people, all while I was holding my kid and trying to get him to settle. This isn't a pitty review, this is a review for Aaron not to attack his customers since 1) we aren't aware of card fees to be charged to employees 2) we aren't aware they are the ones cleaning the table (to add to it, his coworker was helping him before we left. Was he gonna compensate her for that?) 3) if you see a mother and her child crying in her arms, do not approach her with this disrespect Then to tell her she's a horrible person. 4) I've been a server before. its not always great but i didn't end up liking how it paid me back so I switched to the legal industry. So make a choice AARON, you make a choice each day going in. I spent almost $200 here and left him a great tip. He might get his wish and I won't be...