Yama Asian Fusion

My daughter and husband had sushi — they were happy with their food. I ordered a thai dish — spicy mango chicken. It was awful. The sauce was an unpleasant vinegary yet sweet taste. The mango was hard and in chunks. According to the menu, the chicken had been marinated — but it didn’t seem marinated at all. I didn’t even want to eat this dish. Thai Aroma is up the road a few miles — it’s fabulous! I’ll go there net time!

This is my go to place for Sushi. Absolutely love everything that they make. Keep in mind, I’ve ONLY eaten the sushi, soups and appetizers from this place and that is where my four stars comes from. I think the quality and the portion of the rolls are nice. I’ve been back about 20 times or so since I discovered this place, both take out and sit in, times varying from noon to 930 at night. It can be busy during dinner rush, but most of the time when I’ve stepped in the staff was not rushed. Out of those 20 times, I’ve had them get my order wrong once and they offered to fix it (Received a fusion roll instead of my normal roll). They were also able to make sushi rolls with soy paper instead of seaweed when asked (at an extra dollar per roll). I’m not usually impressed by the other plates I see come out of the kitchen so I haven’t tried any of them. The atmosphere is nice, but can do without the TVs. The wontons’ have changed over the times I’ve visited and have seemingly gotten smaller in size.
My favorite: Sexy Lady Roll

This place was not good. All of the dishes were sub-​par. It wasn’t terrible, but it was all sub-​par. Neither my friend nor myself enjoyed our meals. The only thing I really liked was the seaweed salad and I think that’s pretty hard to mess up!

Nearly $ 60 for lunch on a Saturday for 3 sushi rolls and one entrée is pretty pricey. The Crispy Beef was rather tasty. But two of the sushi rolls were rather bland and pretty tasteless. Only the Baltimore roll had any real flavor.
The prices are high for sushi rolls. The Alaskan Treasure roll was $ 17 and didn’t deliver the spicy flavor it advertised.
The service was good and people were friendly. It’s just not enough to bring me back.

Yama takes an ambitious stab at the crowded «Asian Fusion» market. It’s located in a new development on the site of the old Forest Motel (across from Enchanted Forest). On this first visit, the sushi was excellent, but the cooked food came up short.
The «sexy yellowtail» sushi appetizer was delicious: thin cuts of yellowtail topped with jalapeño slices and dots of spicy sauce, all on a bed of cucumber sticks marinated in a pool of a mildly vinegary sauce. Very good, and verifies friends’ recommendations that this a place for sushi.
The cooked food, though, was uninteresting:
* General Tso’s chicken was dry, overcooked/​overbreaded meat, in a sweet, sticky sauce that had the color and flavor of «orange chicken». Only 1 – 2 pieces of chicken were not terribly dry. Accompanying broccoli was undercooked by comparison. Steamed rice was included.
* The grilled salmon w/​black bean sauce (a signature entrée) was also visibly overcooked. The sauce was sweeter than it should have been. Steamed rice was included.
The location is new, attractively decorated, with outdoor seating available (elevated above the adjacent parking and US-​40).
This niche («all in one» Asian) may do well in blander suburbs where options may be few, but here in Howard County we have a bounty of specialized and excellent Asian restaurants– there’s little call for so-​so versions of multiple cuisines under one roof.
This mediocre attempt at covering 3 – 4 major cuisines is worth visiting for the sushi, but comes up short on the rest.

Wow we should have read the reviews before choosing to gamble on this place. They are clearly some nice people but the food was poor and they were understaffed.
Pros– Thai chicken stir fry was fine. Calamari was interesting and tasty (fried tempura batter style)
Cons– calamari was tiny for the price. My dish was complete crap (noodles were poor, shrimp were not sautéed in the peanut sauce). Service was slow.

This is a wonderful little find, the inside is pretty cool. Best Peking Duck great sushi but a little pricey. They also don’t make great mixed drinks.

I love this place. Clean, great service and the food was so good!
Going back again soon.

I read the good reviews and the bad, and decided to give it a try. And yea it’s bad. I’ve been eating Thai food for 20 years and this is by far the blandest I’ve ever had. Ordered red curry to go, tasted like coconut milk and that’s about it. Defiantly would not recommend this place to anyone.

Just an update: We have been to Yama four times now and the food and service have been consistently top notch. This is now our go-​to place for asian food and we have also had some of their sushi offerings. The sushi is as good as you will find in the Baltimore/​Columbia suburbs.

Yama Asian Fusion was one of the first tenants of the newly build Forest Green Shopping Center. They have a very visible storefront from Route 40. Since I work nearby, I decided to check it out.
The interior of the restaurant is trendy and beautiful. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the meal; everything else was lackluster and mediocre experience. For a restaurant with such a fancy interior, it was kind of strange that their menu was a fancy take-​out menu. Of course, it doesn’t affect food so I let it pass.
The menu was fairly comprehensive, ranging from sushi and sashimi to Chinese food to Thai food. I opted for pad thai, one of my favorite dishes to eat and to make. It is a benchmark dish I use to gauge any new Asian restaurants I go to.
My pad thai was a fairly nice size and looked good. However, the taste was a little off. There was a hint of spiciness to the dish. I didn’t mind the slight heat, it was also unexpected… the menu didn’t mention anything about it. But more importantly, there was a distinct Chinese-​food-​like taste to the dish. I can’t quite describe it other than the fact that I taste it often when eating Chinese food. While the pad thai wasn’t bad, it wasn’t all that good.
Service here was also lacking. Our waitress came by slowly and disappeared for prolonged periods of time.
Overall, it was fairly disappointing. Given that there are a lot of Asian offerings in the area within a 10 – 15 minute drive, Yama had better up their game if they want to stay relevant.

A place that might not have the best food ever but has and awesome staff with a huge heart i belive that with a lil bit more of attention. To the food they can get to a really good level

Went here for dinner yesterday because my friends and I wanted to try it out. Décor was nice and clean inside. However, their menu is a piece of glossy paper, kind of like what you’d get as a take out menu. They have thai, chinese and sushi there. A large selection to choose from!
Service was fast, which I liked. However, our server did mess up our order. We ordered the walnut shrimp and she gave us grilled peanut shrimp. When we told her about it she kept saying she asked if we wanted this dish and claimed that we said yes. Clearly there was some miscommunication… but she didn’t apologize or offer to change it.
Food wise, it was definitely not what I was expecting. The pad thai is a fusion of thai and something. They added bell peppers and basil to the pad thai and the noodles were cut up into like 3 inch lengths. The peppered steak with onions had no taste and meat was rough. The peanut shrimp dish was overwhelming with peanut sauce.
Overall, I wouldn’t go back to this place. There are better places if you want chinese or thai food around there.

The two stars is for how nice the place looked, they spent too much money to have that weird menu and odd service.
Our waitress was too over Us and trying to talk us into ordering things we had no intention to order, some space would have been great…
Then we ordered a lunch special and a «speciality roll» — Baltimore roll– the crab seemed canned, the roll wasn’t good or worth $ 15): we also ordered calamari as a appetizer and got literally 6 pieces of it which I thought was odd. The spicy tuna and the salmon roll was good.
A soup came with our meal as stated on the menu under «specialty rolls» and our waitress kept telling us (two times then once again when the check came) that the soup normally costs something but she is giving it to us for free.
I hope this place improves, it’s location is golden and the atmosphere and ambience is great, just some menu tweaks and service improvements but can’t say I’m willing to try again after my experience unfortunately.

Super delicious ‘crab dynamite’ roll! There was practically an entire crab cake on top of that thing. Ahi tuna was on point as well.
Only complaint is that the drinks were super duper weak. After one sip I asked for another and it was a no go. He wouldn’t refund me or trade me. My friends drink was the same. It tasted like pure grenadine!
But love everything else. I’m actually craving it right now!

Food was not good. I don’t know it was just my plate, but my shrimp was NOT COOKED enough. My sister ordered sushi and she said it was just okay, kind-​of dry. That was it.
I honestly do not want to come back here again because the service we got was HORRIBLE. I have been a lot of restaurants, and this restaurant has the most terrible service. It was very unpleasant and upsetting. We ordered some dumplings. I don’t know if they missed or forgot the order, but when I asked for the dumplings, they did not bother to apologize. Rather, they just IGNORED us completely. There were one other group other than us. They were not busy, but they just ignored us.
I really DON’T RECOMMEND to go this place. You can get better food, better service with the same amount of the money.

Beautiful new Asian Fusion restaurant in Ellicott City! The the atmosphere is really nice, ordered takeout online and went in to get it. They even have a private party room that would be perfect for all types of occasions. The gentleman who I spoke with, Alex, was very helpful! I was super excited about this, however, when I got back to my studio I didn’t have soy sauce or the spicy mayo that I had asked for several times. That was kind of disappointing after the very pleasant interaction I had while at the restaurant. The sushi was okay, kind of dry, I had asked for Crunchies to be inside the rolls however they were kind of thrown on top. The edamame wasn’t completely cooked and didn’t have any salt. Will probably have to give it another try and update my review accordingly.

Their drunken noodles were very bland, no flavor at all but greasy and greasy. My son ordered spicy combination lo mein and he ended up asking for more sauce to pour in his plate. My hubby’s beef fried rice was okay but still not near as good as other places. Eel cucumber roll needed to add more rice and less moisture in the cucumber, all I tasted was soaked cucumbers.
Normally a new place has good food, at least for their beginning, but for this one I wasn’t impressed with their food at all. Even for their service, we had to wait and look for our waitress. And it was not a busy time at all.
Am I planning to go back there? Not at all, at least not intentionally.

This is a nothing special Americanized asian food. I was expecting actual fusion food per the name, but alas no fusion foods. They offer sushi, Thai, Chinese carry-​out style food.
Ordered the Thai tamerin shrimp. Unfortunately not good. 8 pieces of shrimp that were well cooked, too many pineapples and onions accompanied the plate. Also the citrus/​butter flavor was too strong without anything savory to balance the plate.
A friend ordered the sushi deluxe. Well assorted fish of average quality. The cuts were a good size.
The food was a bit over priced considering the other options around EC.
Service was good and friendly. The ambience is contemporary modern with potential.
Would not return until menu tweaks are made.

I am Chinese and I also ate a lot of Thai food. But i am very skeptical when I see this place open with banner for Chinese, Thai and sushi. What kind of place would have all of these, one has to wonder?
I came here for the first time during lunch time today and I ordered panang curry with chicken. I am actually happy with my dish. It is very flavorful and the chicken are tender. The waitress seems very nice as well. The decoration is quite modern and nicely done. It would work for business lunch. I would probabaly come back for other dishes.