YAYOI

Good place for lunch — yummy, fast and reasonably priced Japanese food. There are iPads at every table so you can order quickly instead of the usual pain of trying to wave down busy staff. My water and dessert showed up 3 min after I punched in my order, and my main course 7 min after ! Super efficient ! Mixed Toji set at $ 13.90 is a good choice for indecisive people like me who want everything :) Katsu, 1 prawn tempura, some stir fried beef and egg all over. Comes with small appetizer, yummy Japanese rice and soup. The Tonkatsu and fried chicken are YUM !

Mall has a choice of several Japanese restaurants, seating is in an open area, no AC, but well ventilated with dealing fans. The menu is a large format thick book with beautifully photographed dishes, together with the huge choice, makes it difficult to decide! We all wanted to try 2 – 3 dishes!
Orders were placed using a mounted iPad, very intuitive menu. Food was delivered within 2 – 5 minutes which was amazing! The watermelon smoothie was really good too so was the aubergines and fried chicken.
Highly recommended.

Yayoiken never fails to impress and uphold its high standards of fried Japanese food. Its service quality and freshness of the meat to the degree of friends and taste seems to be ever so consistent. That is a feat in itself.

This place is without a doubt, the best Japanese restaurant in Singapore. I’m not sure about the other outlets, but this is phenomenal. The udon+rice combo is my favorite, it cost only about $ 12! And it makes you full! And the rice is soft and the udon is handmade. If you’re a fan of egg, i highly recommend the egg omelet. It’s fluffy and not much egg taste. Even if you don’t like eggs, you will love it! I also tried shima hokee. It’s grilled fish. It was grilled beautifully and it had great flavor.
Overall, i highly recommend this restaurant to anybody, they have even free flow of rice! So you can get as many bowls as you want!

I visited this place last night after a yoga session nearby, and I really have to say that I was surprised that the food was so good! I was half expecting the standard of an ichiban boshi, but I can really vouch at least, for the katsu (fried) set meals. I had the seasonal fried oyster set meal, and for 16.90 you get rice and 4 huge oysters with two different sauces, cold tofu, a salad with yummy sesame dressing and miso soup. Besides the fact that it was a lot of food, the taste was excellent. The greens were fresh and the salad dressing was delicious. The rice (I’m particular about my rice) was fluffy and aromatic, and the oysters were big, fresh and fried just the right way. Crispy, but doesn’t taste too oily, and with the tartare sauce, I was in heaven. The tofu and soup was alright, but in all, it was great. My friend’s chicken katsu was as good, with the chicken still moist and the outside crispy and good. I am particular about fried oysters because I’ve been spoilt by the ones at saboten, but I have to say that this place is on par, and the menu is about 5x as extensive as saboten. Grilled, broiled fish and meat dishes, and they even have a cool online ordering system. Will definitely go back!

cheap and quite okay japanese at the 100am mall in tanjong pagar. the first time I came here, we thought the food was impressive: large-​ish portions, pleasantly-​surprisingly-​small prices and a huge menu composed of a clever permutation of a not-​so-​huge selection of dishes. this decent experience prompted an enthusiastic return, but it proved less sparkling: the food was too salty, the cooking of a lower standard — and the pater didn’t much like it.
which brings me, really, to a less-​than-​effervescent recommendation than I’d initially thought: this place will do you well good for mid-​week/​office lunches — cheap japanese food with large portions and a big menu for everyone — but if you’re thinking of a sit-​down meal where you have nothing else on your mind but the food, it’s not ideal (or close to, in fact).
the place has an open concept — it’s more (nydc-​style) café-​like than anything else, and though I’m under the impression that the mall is pretty new, the chairs and tables show sign of wear. it’s a little dingy, actually — very food-​court like — so while it’ll do for a harried lunch, it’s not really the sort of place you’d linger.
the menu is very cleverly composed of a small set of dishes that are combined rather ingeniously into a bible of a menu — a quarter of the menu populated with a la carte meats and dishes, and the remaining 75% a composition of set meals based on the very same. quality-​wise, it’s a mixed bag: there are some dishes that are really quite enjoyable, though a lot of it is bog standard middling japanese-​chain.
the best way to describe the food here, really, is that it does what it says on the tin. nothing more, nothing less — precisely what you’d expect from a middle-​to-​low ranged japanese chain (probably hovering about the sakae sushi level). the low prices make for a compelling argument at lunch — but at dinner time, when I’m hoping for a meal to wash the work week away, this place will not do at all.

Okay, I need to update this review. Given that I frequent this place every 1 – 2 months and is my bf’s favorite nearby restaurant, Yayoiken doesn’t deserve it’s original 2 star rating. Perhaps my expectations were too high? Gosh darnit! I’ll just say it… I wish this place has more sashimi! I want sake (the salmon but yes to the alcohol)!
And the saba fish and curry katsu turmoil? Sigh, I love my bf so I will eat here and be a silent «fan.»