Yoki Japanese Restaurant & Sushi Bar

The stacks of asymmetrical uncomfortable gray plastic chairs in otherwise empty spaces say it all. Yoki has gone the way of the mediocre restaurant occupying its space before they did, and of countless other eating places that weren’t worth your dining-​out dollar. Sa-​yoki-​nara!

First of all, this location is CLOSED. Permanently closed.
The reason for the 2 stars is the extremely poor handling of the closure.
My take: If you’re out of business, you should at least have a sign up telling everyone that you’re closed. I live in Central Square and love sushi. I tried to have dinner at this place at least on 2 separate occasions only to find the lights off and the doors locked. This is during business hours and completely unprofessional!
The food, however, was good and I enjoyed the creative rolls that they served.

Spectacular sushi every time. Red Sox, Spider, California Sunrise… pretty much the entire menu is fabulous. Love this place! Super clean, great staff, gorgeous bar and $ 1 oysters on Sunday!!!

This place had the best Spicy Edamame. Unfortunately, upon trying to order some tonight I discovered that it is now closed for business. :(

The food here was nothing special nor anything bad however the service was insanely slow and this place had one of the worst bathrooms I’ve seen awhile (not counting bars). There was a huge bump to step over all the tile is falling apart no toilet paper or paper towels. If you can’t keep a clean bathroom it doesn’t give me a ton of confidence in your kitchen. Sorry.

I would go to the Medford one. This place barely had anything on the menu for lunch and what they had was okay. I dont understand why at 2 there was no avocado salad or if they dont have it at all. It is empty for a reason… the boss lady needs to up the game at this one. The décor isnt as nice as Medford nor is the service better. There is also less food on the menu… plus no where to park. I wish it was like Medford.

Pretty terrible, we ordered online they got our order wrong. We ordered soup and they just gave us miso soup, the rice is hard. Tempura was soggy, very unappetizing

Last night I wanted some sushi and put an order in on my Unilocal app, which brought me to an ordering portal by
. Didn’t receive an email confirmation so I called and the person who answered confirmed that they had my order.
Fast forward a half hour and someone else calls me back saying that they no longer do business with
and that I can come pick up my order, but they will not deliver. I ask if there will be some sort of discount for this inconvenience and the person puts me on hold.
It turns out that they CAN deliver it if they pay for the order a second time, this time directly to Yoki, while I will be forced to deal with
to get a refund. As they had my order the only conclusion is that
must take a commission that Yoki didn’t want to pay, and obviously a few dollars is more important than keeping a repeat customer. On a $ 35 order, I can’t imagine this decision was over anymore than $ 5.
Anyways, I was annoyed to begin with that we ordered from Yoki and not their much better neighbor, Thelonious Monkfish, so I quickly put in a new order for superior sushi and service.

Such good sushi! I always get the red sox maki and love it so much. They give the option of brown rice if you want to be healthy :) I just stick with the white rice though.
This is a great date night place. Always friendly waitresses and good drinks and literally the best sushi I have ever had!

While I have not eaten at this restaurant, their total lack of respect for my personal property leads me to believe that this could be reflected in their quality of service. Today I found a postcard advertisement underneath my windshield wiper that had been sitting there for two days because I do not use my car everyday. It had rained and the postcard was stuck to my windshield. When I went to take it off, half the paper remained, covering my inspection sticker, AND the text of the postcard was etched on my windshield! Disrespectful and rude. Your advertising campaign has had the opposite effect. I have no plans to try this restaurant and I will tell my friends to avoid it.

The food was edible, but not nearly deserving of its price. The place is usually fairly empty, and the atmosphere is pure odd. It’s very big inside, and the music is blaring house as if it were a club. The décor was very neony and just didn’t make sense.
Would not recommend!

i actually like the location in Medford a lot more. For whatever reason I just liked the flavors of the rolls better there. Maybe when I cam into this location the fact that it was dead made it even less appealing, but hey at least everything came out quick. Really everything I had was perfectly average. If you are in the area don’t hesitate to come in but I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back to this location either.

This is my favorite place for sushis in Boston. It’s easy, I haven’t found better place.
My favorite are the Spider maki, and the California sunrise maki.
But I would recommend the Boston teams and all the sushis and maki there.
All are very good.
It kind of a fancy place, so you can bring your dates there.
If you find this place is a bit pricy, you can go there on Sunday and Monday, they have all the sushis you can eat for 24 $. They also offer student discount everyday.
So try it !

$ 24 for all you can eat sushi. If everyone orders the special then you can all share your rolls. If only some of you opt for the special they are specify absolutely no sharing. I urge everyone to get it. Although the menu says to order 2 rolls at a time, you end up getting 4 – 6 rolls. So it’s perfect for sharing in a group. Also, ask for a side of spicy mayo. You’re welcome lol. Also, the fried ice cream was delicious. Our waitress was alright, a little spaced out.

We ate dinner here on a Friday night around 8 pm. It wasn’t crowded at all. We were promptly seated at a nice large booth. Our server came by shortly after and brought us water. We were starving so we put in an order for the avocado salad right away while deciding what to order for dinner. It came out about 5 min later. We loved it. It’s comprised of avocado, artificial crabmeat, and cucumber mixed with mayo and topped with roe and raw salmon slices.
For dinner, we got the Rainbow Maki, Crazy Maki, spicy seafood ramen soup and beef teriyaki. It sounds like a lot of food but the portions weren’t that big.
The service was great, the sushi was pretty good, the teriyaki wasn’t anything special, and I’ve had better ramen elsewhere. The price is comparable to other sushi restaurants. I noticed they have unlimited sushi on Sunday and Monday nights for $ 22, dine-​in only. I think it’s worth going back for that price for just sushi. I wouldn’t go back for their teriyaki or ramen.

Came in mostly because we got a
gift certificate and I was very happy with the experience.
We had a short wait of about 10 minutes which gave us the perfect opportunity to grab a drink at the bar. They have a diverse selection of sake which is always a plus.
The food was great. After not being able to decide on an appetizer the waitress finally recommended the edamame. At first I wasn’t very impressed because duh it’s a sushi place of course you have edamame how special can that be? Apparent very freaking special. We ordered it spicy and it was amazing. Great flavor and a good portion for an appetizer that we were able to continue eating even with the rest of our dinner. We also ended up ordering the rainbow and Celtic maki. Both were great but I would highly, highly recommend the Celtic. I was pleasantly surprised with the unique flavors in the roll!

Just did take out — maybe the experience would have been better with a little restaurant atmosphere.
The staff was super attentive and helpful giving directions to places to kill time while they made my order.
I got three rolls, all were a little salty and light on fish in my personal opinion. Maybe there aren’t better options in the area, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back.

Recently came in with my family during the Japan Festival today. It’s hard to find parking on Mass Ave. There’s no real place to park unless you’re willing to stalk some people for their spots! BUT, it’s very conveniently placed a few blocks from Central Square off the red line.
The place was packed and had no table to seat a party of five, but the super kind hostess offered us any seat at the bar (we had members under 21, so that was a no-​go) or at the sushi counter. Well, there was an empty side and we «called» it as soon as we could. Haha. Service was kinda slow and my brother ended up cleaning and wiping down our area. The hostess (who at this point became our waitress and bartender!) quickly set our plates and chopsticks together, got our drink orders and food orders.
Everyone was very satisfied with their dishes. I don’t remember anyone complaining about anything in particular. Pretty much raves all around in regards to the presentation and yumminess of the food. I’ll definitely stop here again! Also, the price is what I consider to be low-​average for Cambridge. For a group of five (four of which ordered something), our bill came to $ 75 + tip.
Moreover, I wish I could remember her name. but our waitress/​hostess was incredibly kind and made the usually dull experience so much better!

I came here with my boyfriend on a Saturday evening for dinner. We had a coupon so we figured we should use it and we had walked past Yoki so many times, we wanted to try it out.
The two of us sat in a spacious booth that could have easily fit three people per side, but the restaurant wasn’t very full so we had our choice of seating.
For an appetizer, we ordered the pork and vegetable gyoza (you can choose steamed or pan fried, we did fried), which had 6 small dumplings. They were very tasty but they were also quite small.
They have a pretty extensive menu, not limited to sushi and nigiri, but noodles, udon, fried rice, etc. For entrees, we were interested in the special maki and we ordered one Rock n’ Roll and one Celtics Roll. Again, both were delicious, but not filling at all. After wolfing down the sushi, my stomach was rumbling for more.
–1 star: Atmosphere. Although I appreciate Lil’ Boosie, Juicy J, Nelly and R. Kelly, they have no place in a sushi restaurant. I thought one of the sushi chefs had aspirations of being a rap star, and could not resist spinning some hot throwback tracks. Where is the relaxing /​ethereal music I have come to expect from my sushi experience?
–1 star: Portions. I was still hungry at the end of the meal. Usually, I don’t expect sushi to fill me up, but for how much the meal cost, I’d expect to not be looking forward to going home and eating a some more.
Ultimately, I’d go back to Yoki if I had a deal, or for the 25-​cent dumplings at the bar. But I wouldn’t go and pay full price for the sushi.

When you’ve just watched the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi and need raw fish and rice in your mouth ASAP (as was the case for me last weekend), Yoki is a great spot for solid sushi in Central. I come here when I’m craving fresh, straightforward sushi. And when Thelonious Monkfish has too long of a wait.
The atmosphere and service are… interesting. The interior is white and spacious, verging on seeming sterile, and makes the space look large although it’s never been very full when I’ve been, even on weekend nights, which is a bit surprising. Because the restaurant was half empty, we expected the service to be top notch since we wouldn’t be competing with other diners for our server’s attention. I’m not sure if our waitress was new or just perpetually confused, but she was struggling. When we ordered glasses of Savignon Blanc, she asked if it was a white wine. Yes, yes it is.
The menu is extensive, so we took our time scoping out the options as well as enjoying our conversation. However, our waitress interrupted us 3 or 4 times to see if we were ready for our food order although our menus were still open in front of us. As I mentioned, we both wanted simple, fresh sushi. Lots of it. So we ordered the Rock the Boat for Two. And it was the best decision. For a little over $ 50, this includes salad, miso soup, and a nautical vessel topped with sashimi, nigiri, and maki. Absolutely beautiful. The slices of fish were thick and flavorful, and we ate with abandon. Although we tried our very hardest, we couldn’t finish it! Man overboard.
We wanted to order a cocktail to finish off our meal, but now our once-​pesky waitress couldn’t be found! The place is big, so there were a number of places she could be hiding, but I don’t know what she was doing because we were her only table. After about 10 minutes of looking around for her, we finally catch a glimpse and are able to flag her down. We get two Dark and Stormies, which are served with a toothpick spearing an orange slice and a maraschino cherry for some reason. This detail gives them a weird, tropical drink vibe. This obviously isn’t the specialty of the house, but I don’t complain because they’re still tasty.
Although the overall experience could use a bit of work, I’ve always enjoyed my trips to Yoki. Go for the fish.