Yo! Sushi, Upper Mall East Bullring, Birmingham

...be, it is confusing as Yo! Sushi is situated on the lower floor of Selfridges in the Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham City Centre. It is visible from the outside of Selfridges and is located on the right hand side of the shop. The Bullring has a carpark which takes you right into the shopping centre, although it takes you to the opposite side of the Bullring, it is not far to walk. This carpark can be quite expensive so if you know the area ...
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What is Yo! Sushi?
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Yo! Sushi is a mixture of traditional Japanese and Western food which is freshly prepared by chefs infront of you. You can see it being made and you then have the knowledge that it is truley freshly made and not frozen. When you go to Yo! Sushi you are greeted by a waitress who seats you at a counter, which is shared by many others, similar to sitting at a bar. Between ... more

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Where it is situated
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Although on here, it is advertised as 'Upper Mall' which it may be, it is confusing as Yo! Sushi is situated on the lower floor of Selfridges in the Bullring Shopping Centre in Birmingham City Centre. It is visible from the outside of Selfridges and is located on the right hand side of the shop. The Bullring has a carpark which takes you right into the shopping centre, although it takes you to the opposite side of the Bullring, it is not far to walk. This carpark can be quite expensive so if you know the area you are best to park somewhere else.

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What is Yo! Sushi?
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Yo! Sushi is a mixture of traditional Japanese and Western food which is freshly prepared by chefs infront of you. You can see it being made and you then have the knowledge that it is truley freshly made and not frozen. When you go to Yo! Sushi you are greeted by a waitress who seats you at a counter, which is shared by many others, similar to sitting at a bar. Between two seats is an individual water fountain serving both fizzy and still water, wasabi, soy sauce, chopsticks and napkins. If you have not been there before, the staff member will explain to you how it works, but it also explains it in the booklet which is where you are seated to, we found this really useful. Yo! Sushi works by the chefs preparing a wide variety of dishes and placing them on a conveyor belt which goes around in a square on where you are sitting. The conveyor belt is constently being topped up and is never short of a variety of dishes going round. Each dish is colour coded for price, which you can find in the booklet, there is a choice of 6 colours, the cheapest being green which cost £1.70, which to no suprise where not many of and the most expensive being a sort of grey colour which cost £5.00, which we did not see one of go round. On your dish you get a small amount of food, for example one of the dishes I chose was Tuna, I had 4 small slices on that, and that was a medium priced dish at £3.60. Also available was a hot food service, where you could order dishes on the menu that were not on the conveyor belt as they came hot and were cooked specially to order, as we were in a rush we didn't have to do this, but would next time, as there looked like there were some tasty dishes.

YO! Sushi is great for everyone from workers wanting a healthy, tasty business lunch, to parents introducing their kids to an eating environment and shoppers and travellers looking for an alternative to fast food.

Over the last 10 years consumer tastes have changed dramatically, especially in the raw fish area of food. When Yo! Sushi! first opened in England it was considered revolutionary to eat raw fish and California Rolls were considered exotic, Sushi is now a modern, fashionable and upcoming way of eating and I can see it continuing to keep getting even more popular.

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Quality of food
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All the food looked appetising, it was beautifully presented. All the dishes were full of flavour and tasted fresh and were yummy! The quality of ingredients were good, you could taste this is the dishes. Nothing tasted horrible, not even the raw foods, nothing was gooey or as it is badly told as!

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Variety of food
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You can choose from 91 dishes, including sashimi, makis and nori wrapped hand rolls through to hot staples such as chicken katsu curry, salmon teriyaki and spicy beef ramen, so from this small selection you can already see that it is not just raw fish offered. Although there is some raw fish, there is also alot of cooked fish and cooked meats, although there is also some uncooked meat too. There are also vegetarian dishes and sweet dishes such as pancakes with raspberry sauce available. There is a huge selection of food available for all different taste buds. Yo! Sushi don't have all their 91 dishes going around the conveyor belt, I'd say they had about 30 of them, but if you fancy any of the others you just have to ask and they will be made up there and then for you.

I have never tried Eel before but it's always been a food I've been unsure about, and I've eaten Frog's legs! But a dish kept going past us which looked really tasty, we looked it up in the booklet and found out it was eel, as it looked so nice, I decided to give it a go and it was delicious! It just looked like white fish positioned on a block of rice which a band of seaweed keeping it in place, it wasn't gooey and slimey and grey like I had expected and it was really tasty! I was pleasantly suprised.

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Staff
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Although you don't have much interatction which the staff due to the nature of the resturant, whenever you did they were very friendly, polite and willing to help. The only time you would need to speak to them was if ordering a drink or some hot food. They did regularly come round to your seats and check that you were okay, although I found they did this a little too much.

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Yo! Sushi Takeaway
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Yo! Sushi offer a takeaway service which is located by the till, it offers a selection of their most popular dishes in a box ready to take out, which would be good if you were in a rush and didn't have time to stop and eat. These were priced similar to the dishes that went around the conveyor belt.

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How to pay
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At the end of your meal all the empty dishes are counted up by the waitress at the end of the meal who writes down what you have had on a piece of paper for you to take to a till for the cashier to ring up for you. Please go on http://www.yosushi.com/yo_restaurant_menu.php for the pricing system.

The Wasabi and Soy Sauce was free but you had to pay £1 for the water but could refill your glass as many times as you wanted for that £1 which I thought was very reasonable for a resturant. Other soft drinks were also fairly good value, a can of 7UP was £1.50.

Between two people, who weren't even hungry we had about 5 dishes, a glass of water and a can of 7UP, the bill came to £20 which we thought was expensive for what is was, especially as we were not really hungry. As the dishes are so small, if you were hungry you would be looking to spend quite a significant amount. What made it seem less worth the money was the fact you didn't get your own table and you didn't really get service as you would in a typical resturant.

Since doing this review, I had a look on the website and have just found out that you can get 25% off discount if you are a student, just log onto http://www.yosushi.com/student_offer.php/action/1 and fill in your details and what college/university you go to and they will send you a voucher! This is a great help, some money off that pricey bill!

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Contact Info.
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Head Office
YO! Sushi World, 95 Farringdon Road,
London, EC1R 3BT, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7841 0700

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Conclusion
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I found Yo! Sushi very novel, as there don't tend to be many resturants like that around England and it was a nice chance. It was a quick bite, and for what it was it was expensive, but that won't stop me going back as it was very tasty and I really enjoyed it! 

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