Yo! Ferretfood is back after a very much shorter than usual absence. This week Yo! Sushi is set firmly in my reviewing sights, quaking and quivering in primordial terror!

Yo! Sushi is a sushi blast from the past. I don't know quite when the place was founded, but it serves Sushi as if we still lived in the time when yuppies roamed the earth: it's served on a conveyor belt. Which is all very novel, and of which more below. Yo! is a chain with branches in London, High Wycombe, Oxford and a whole bunch of rather more distant places, and I suspect they're all very similar. The Oxford branch was naturally the one that drew this reviewer in, and here are the vital statistics:

Yo! Sushi
73-75 George Street
OX1 2BQ

I had:

God only knows. Quite a lot. There were some pancakes in there, and some sushi, and other odds and ends, but Yo! Sushi rather militates against knowing what you're eating - of which more below...

I'm sure anyone reading this knows the mark scheme by now, but I'll repeat it anyway:

30 points for food
30 points for ambience
20 points for service
10 points for drinks
10 points for price

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Food-wise, Yo! Sushi is rather hard to assess without reference to the ambience, so I'm going to look at the two categories together. The first thing to know is that the system at Yo! Sushi is rather unlike that in either a normal restaurant or a normal noodle bar. The chefs sit, in the open, in the centre of the room, surrounded by a conveyor belt onto which they place dishes, colour-coded according to price. The dishes rotate past the bar-stool type seating, and you grab what you want. At the end, the waitress tots up your bill using the colours of the plates you've left behind.

Now, the cool things about this system are the novelty and the flexibility. Basically, taking stuff off a conveyor belt on a whim is really cool, and unlike in a normal restaurant, you can be stuffing raw fish into your grinning maw within moments of being seated. All this is made easier by the water dispensers on every table, coupled with the little sunken tubs of wasabi, ginger, soy sauce, and other useful condiments. It's also cool to watch the chefs at work, and the colourful plates are rather good for the mood. The whole system is flexible too, because you can either plan a meal with the little menu they give you, or you can just grab whatever looks cool, one dish at a time, feasting until sated (which is what I did).

The downsides are that sometimes it's hard to get what you want, especially (I expect) out of typical eating hours, and that the systems tends to force the quality of the food down. Yo! Sushi must have massive wastage problems, and that obviously means their food isn't going to be as fresh as perhaps it could be, or sometimes that the ingredients aren't top notch. That's not a big problem, as the food is all up to a minimum standard, there's lots of choice, and the sushi is at least better than you'd get in a pack at a supermarket, but nonetheless you end up thinking it might be a better place to stop in and refuel than to stop in for the evening.

I should point out one small error on the part of Yo! Sushi here, although I'm not going to penalise them for it. Near Yo! Sushi is a car park, one of the few in central Oxford, and from this car park you can see a bright orange Yo! Sushi sign, and a door into the restaurant. Beside this door is a festering pile of rubbish at least eight feet high. Now, a little more examination revealed this to be a back door, not for customers. Which leaves a question: why the sign? Are you trying to make people associate Yo! Sushi with teetering mounds of trade refuse? Bad idea guys - take the sign down, or put the crap into a wheelie bin.

Food: 15/30... a bit mediocre, for the reasons I've discussed

Ambience: 25/30 (with dollops of extra marks for the sheer cool and novelty factor)

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Next up, we have service. At first glance, you wouldn't think Yo! Sushi had much need for service - after all, you serve yourself. However, it does need staff to explain the system (which is an unusual one), to provide help to people, and to get specially ordered dishes (because you can order stuff to be made specially for you if you don't see it on the conveyor, although as far as I'm concerned that's cheating).

In these respects the staff were, as far as I can tell, pretty good. I knew the system when I came in, but they were pleasant and polite, and I saw them helping out other people all the time. A good impression, if not tested to breaking point by any means.

Service: 14/20

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Drinks. Oh my...

Well, Yo! Sushi isn't about the drinks. All you're going to get is the water dispenser on your table (fizzy or still!! Oooooh, the choice!!!!), plus miso soup if you count that as a drink. On the plus side, your drinks are free-refill-tastic. On the downside, you pay 1.00 for that drink, which given that it's basically what you'd get free in any other restaurant, rankles a fair bit.


Drinks: 2/10

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Price. Well, the price is a bit steep to be honest. You pay by the plate, so although each dish doesn't cost much, it all adds up over time, and often in a way that can be hard to keep track of. I reckon I ate about the equivalent of a two course meal, but that cost nearly 25. My partner ate for much less, but she's a vegetarian, and the vegetable dishes were inevitably the cheapest. I fear in fact that I might have been paying London prices, although outside of London. I also fear that the prices might have been aimed at people who have smaller meals than me. My theory is that the prices are also forced up by the inevitable wastage in a system where dishes aren't made on demand, but that's really a reason rather than an excuse.


Price: 3/10

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So an overall mark of 59%. Yo! Sushi is a really cool novelty, great fun if you need perking up or are in the mood for mad, rushing indulgence. It's not quite worth making it a lifestyle choice though, even if you could afford it.