Sushi Yasaka

Monday night at 9p and the place is packed. And for good reason. The sashimi is swimming-​yesterday fresh. It is fantastic — the stuff of fantasy.

The fish was fresh and the sushi rolls are good for your every day fare. I ordered the sashimi platter and my boyfriend ordered the miyabi with eel avocado roll. Both were good portions and for a great price. The nigiri isn’t what you get from high end restaurants where the rice is a perfect temperature, lightly packed, and seasoned just so with rice vinegar, but you’re not paying for that either here… but that’s not to say that it isn’t still delicious!
We sat at the bar because we didn’t come with reservations. The only gripe about the bar is that all night long I watched them make my favorite roll, the spider roll. Whole soft shell crabs fried and wrapped with avocado… they came out so large that I only wish I had room to order one! Just another reason to come back next time!
The service was great, they refilled my water and tea promptly without calling them over. The restaurant is a little small so make sure you come with reservations because it does get fully booked.

Ridiculously fresh food. If you just want want good affordable sushi — come here. There is usually a line — 45−1hr wait. It’s not fancy like nobu-​but it’s really good sushi. The miso soup is yum (not too salty like other places).

Went here for the lunch special and it was definitely worth it, the portions were generous and sushi was fresh! Will be my staple lunch out with friends starting from now on.

It saddens me to have to update since my last review. Sadly within the the 2 years I have been dinning here, the quality and service has seriously gone down in every aspect.
Food — lots have changed on the menu. Often times the more premium ingredients are being substituted, such as the uni or ikura option for their sushi special. Also there is definitely a change/​shift in the kitchen, the taste for the dishes are no longer consistent.
Authenticity– the once in charge Japanese sushi chefs have been replaced by Chinese chefs instead. It shouldn’t matter if it doesn’t affect the quality but that’s clearly not case here.
Service — the servers are great and always friendly and at tentative. However the hosts at the front are despicable, very rude bunch and poor time management where a lot of times even with reservation you still have to wait 15 – 25 minutes which defeats the purpose. I have witnessed them straight out rejected delivery, or take out orders by ignoring the customers on the phone or in person.
Long story short, it’s no longer worth the wait or time to dine here anymore. And they don’t seem to care that they are losing customers either.

Best affordable sushi in Manhattan!
Amazingly consistent quality. Rolls and sashimi are always fresh. Perfect balance of ingredients. Lots of options for rolls as well – like yellowtail. Their sushi is just always so damn good. Appetizers like the sauteed organic mushrooms and ankimo (monk fish liver if you’re feeling adventurous) are also very flavorful. The prices are unbelievably reasonable, especially for their lunch special!
Great place sit down lunch or dinner. Zen décor and relaxing vibes. Have brought a lot of friends here and they all love it too. They’re also very fast with pick up and delivery.
Pro-​tip: Make a reservation if you can. Dinnertime waits can be around 30 minutes or even more for larger groups.

So worth it for lunch! Several lunch special options and comes with miso soup and salad. Super fresh fish. The uni was good too! Make reservations!

Consistently excellent.
Quality fish
Great value
One of the best sushi places in UWS. Bar none.
Wait times typically 45-​hour during peak.

Good fish, reliable quality, & reasonable prices. All of that adds up to a good sushi restaurant. Been here twice. It can get pretty busy. It would definitely help to make a reservation before coming by. I made a reservation once and walked in the other time. Once there weren’t any tables available, so they offered us the sushi bar, which I actually prefer, because I enjoy observing the sushi chefs do their thing.
Mini Omakase — 6 pieces sushi & 1 Roll — $ 26:
6 pieces of nigiri — yay for uni & ebi
6 pieces of tuna roll
Tuna & salmon nigiri tasted fresh, sweet, and tender. The uni was deliciously mushy and melts in your mouth. Ebi was sweet and meaty.
The tuna roll was alright.
Miyabi — 6 pc sushi, 8 pc sashimi, 1 roll — $ 26:
quite a good value considering it’s the same price as the Mini Omakase.
Plenty of tuna, salmon, mackerel, etc.
It also came with an oyster. Delicious.
6 pieces of eel roll — very good
Sashimi Deluxe — Assorted sashimi with rice — $ 24:
tuna, salmon, seared salmon, mackerel, scallops, and the rest I’ve forgotten, but it was good.
This also came with an oyster. I wasn’t expecting either oyster to be on the plate, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it.
Tatsuta Age — fried marinated chicken thigh with wasabi tobiko mayo
good chicken, lots of flavor, crispy & crunchy with tasty dipping mayo
Salmon Roll & Lobster Tempura Roll — both not bad, plated nicely.
Each piece had a nice big piece of lobster.
Green Tea & Vanilla Mille Crepes with red bean, ice cream, whipped cream
Even though we were pretty full, we didn’t fail to order dessert. We didn’t have trouble finishing it either. Creamy, sweet, satisfying cake… or satisfying crepes? Doesn’t matter. It’s very good.

So good! I visited Manhattan with my family and we returned to this place three times in one weekend!
This place has my favorite combination: great sushi in great price. I fell in love with the Chirashi lunch, by we’ve also tried various rolls and udon noodles — everything was delicious. In addition, the presentation was beautiful and the service is good.
As you can expect, this place is busy, but if you’re craving for sushi and you’re in the area don’t miss it — worth the wait.

I seriously don’t want to write this review for fear of attracting more attention to Sushi Yasaka. However, they absolutely deserve the praise! I’ve visited SY a few times now and each time I’ve got the omakase… partially cause it’s easy but also because it’s such and amazing deal for the amount of sushi you get. Then to top it off the cuts of sushi are fresh and tasty! My one critique about the fish though is that they are a bit cold for my preference.
The staff is pretty attentive for the most part, not perfect but they do have a lot of service to cover. Which brings me to my final point, for dinner, you absolutely want to make a reservation. For obvious reasons it gets pretty busy early on in the evening, so if you don’t make one, you’ll be waiting about 30min plus.

Omakase is a word that gets me excited. Pair that with affordable and you may find yourself a new best friend.
It was an easy reservation with OpenTable but there was no space at the sushi bar. I showed up and saw it was a full house of patrons. After my party and I were seated, we ordered beers and house sake, which were standard. I found the quality of sushi to be very good. I don’t remember any piece standing out like a mouthwatering foodgasm, but overall they were fine. My only gripe was the omakase was put together on one plate (vs piece meal). The service was attentive and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal.
I would come again but aim to sit at the bar for a better omake experience.

A solid affordable Japanese restaurant in the city. Place looks better in real life than the pics they have on their website. Good enough for dates, albeit a little tight.
My brother and I had our first omakase here, $ 50 for 12 pcs plus a roll. Definitely a must try! Everything was fresh, but the scallop was chewy at that time. We got introduced to not-​your-​everyday fish like the torched spanish mackerel, and the toppings made it interesting.
I believe the roll was 3pc minced toro and 3pc yellowtail.
Two thumbs up for Yasaka!

Definitely make reservations! The restaurant had a wait list but we strolled in like VIPs :)
We came here before attending the ballet at the Lincoln Center and had a great meal. I ordered the Sushi Deluxe, which is essentially a chirashi bowl. (But the price is steeper than usual at $ 24). The waitress didn’t tell us what was in it so we had to ask her. When we went, the order included fluke, charred tuna, tuna, and salmon.
The sashimi was all so incredibly fresh and fatty. You could see the buttery sheen on all of them!
If you are a lover of white tuna like me for the charred, fatty taste, then I highly recommend the charred tuna which is even more tender than white tuna and just melts in your mouth.
Reasonable wine and beer prices as well!

I’ve walked by this restaurant many times and finally decided to stop by for dinner one night because I was craving sushi. First tip: Make a reservation! My boyfriend and I came here on a whim, so we had to wait an hour and a half for a table, unfortunately, despite being told by the hostess that it would be an hour wait. The hostess was also not very welcoming, not exactly ideal for someone who is supposed to be the customer’s first impression of the restaurant. It is also not the biggest restaurant, so there is minimal seating. There is also barely any standing room for people to wait – you will be standing awkwardly in front of the doorway while customers are trying to get in and out. They also get extremely busy during dinner time, so customers and servers will be running around you while you’re waiting, so you may find it better to wait outside, which is a bit inconvenient. I saw two seats at the sushi bar open up and asked if we could be seated there since we did not really care about having a table – we were just starving after such a long wait!
My boyfriend and I ordered the Ebi Shinjo for an appetizer. I ordered a Salmon Don for an entrée and he had the Salmon Teriyaki. The Ebi Shinjo is made of shrimp, is batter fried, and they look like donuts. They were pretty good, but I felt like the sauce that came with it didn’t do it justice. My boyfriend really loved his Salmon Teriyaki. The Salmon Don was amazing! I asked for the fish to be completely raw because I don’t really like the taste of seared salmon. The salmon tasted delicious and fresh, the avocado was great as well! I’m the kind of person who can’t only be satisfied with great raw fish – the sushi rice needs to taste just right also. Lacking in either would make a huge difference in taste. Thankfully, their sushi rice tasted perfect!
Definitely give Sushi Yasaka a shot! It’s one of the best sushi joints I have been to in the Upper West Side. However, our server seemed to have neglected us a bit. He was a bit absent throughout our meal. He dedicated a lot of his attention to the couple next to us. He provided them with hot towels and we did not receive any. He also provided them with pretty nice looking plates and gave us ugly plates. The couple next to us also seemed to receive quicker service, despite being seated a lot later than us. Perhaps they have a preference in clientele and we didn’t make the cut. However, that is no excuse to provide underwhelming service. I love the food here, but I can’t overlook the service provided to us by the hostess and server, so I feel obligated to take away two stars. Service is one of the most important aspects of any dining experience.

Great value for the quality/​price. We had seats at the sushi bar. I ordered the omakase which was 12 pieces of sushi and a hand roll for $ 45 which is an excellent value. The fish was very fresh and the rice was good. My favorites of the night were the fatty tuna, uni, wagyu beef, and scallop. We also the house premium sake which was light and went perfectly with our sushi. The chef was nice and gave me an extra piece of sushi. They have other great options for a great value if you’re not that hungry such as the Sushi Deluxe (which is 9 pcs of sushi and a roll) or the mini-​omakase. Definitely will track my way back to upper west side to come here again to eat at the sushi bar.

After a second visit to this restaurant and trying many other sushi places in town we would say that it is definitely one of the best sushi restaurants in terms of quality and value.
I’m still not 100% convinced by the rice but the fish is so freaking fresh and melts in the mouth.
Definitely a great deal to come here.

For the price that you pay, this place is pretty good. Probably a 3.5 star restaurant but I’ll bump it to a 4 for the price. Don’t expect to find the best omakase here. For $ 45, you get 12 pieces plus a maki roll. The ingredients were all very fresh. But maybe they should switch to fresh wasabi? Using powdered wasabi or the ones from the tube really take away from the nice quality fish since powdered wasabi is so much stronger. I also think they over season the fish for omakase. less soy sauce on top the fish please! My friend and I were both super thirsty after the meal.
It would also have been nice to be seated in front of the sushi chef making our omakase. but they had placed us on the other end of the bar.

I almost didn’t want to write this review, because it’s one of those places you don’t want more people to know about. Not that Sushi Yasaka doesn’t already get PLENTY of customers (it does). The prices are just unbelievable for the quality! I almost worry they’ll realize it one day and go, «Wait a minute…»
So far I’ve only been for lunch. In my opinion, this is the best time to come. Not only are their prices lowered for lunch specials, but you don’t have to deal with the dinner rush. Other reviews seem to confirm that you may need reservations for dinner.
I’ll admit I was a little apprehensive when I walked in and saw the largely non-​Japanese crowd. Any reservations I had quickly disappeared once my food arrived.
SUSHI LUNCH ($ 12):
I ordered this on my first visit. It includes 6 pieces of nigiri along with miso soup, salad, and your choice of one cut roll (5 pieces). I’ve definitely paid $ 12 for 6 pieces of nigiri alone, so I jumped at this deal. My set came very neatly presented on a little wooden serving tray: lean tuna, salmon, salmon belly, cooked shrimp, red snapper, and yellowtail (the last two are my own guess) along with the salmon skin hand roll I chose from their list. The nigiri quality in this lunch convinced me I had to come back for another round. The fish was fresh and firm on top of well-​pressed rice.
I generally don’t order cut rolls, but the salmon skin and cucumber in this one worked perfectly together and provided a nice difference from the fresh fish in the nigiri.
CHIRASHI LUNCH ($ 16):
If chirashi is on a menu, there is a 100% chance I will want it. That said, it is generally upwards of $ 30, so I often have to sadly look away. I have no idea how I missed it the first time, but the chirashi lunch special here is an amazingly valued $ 16. And wow. I don’t know if I’ll be able to order anything else here from now on.
For under $ 20, you get miso soup, salad, their daily selection of ~11 pieces of assorted sashimi… AND salmon roe AND a raw oyster! I couldn’t believe that an oyster was included! Usually I’m happy just to have salmon roe, so having that and an oyster made me a little giddy. The rest of the selection included hearty, fresh pieces of sashimi, certainly not skimping in quality or size.
What impressed me most, weirdly, was the rice. This is some of the best sushi rice I’ve tasted. The mix of light sweetness and sticky vinegar was a perfect complement for the sashimi, and I couldn’t get enough. The cooked egg was also great! I generally prefer cake-​style tamago over omelette-​style, but Yasaka’s omelette tamago is very well done.
It did make me a little sad to see the people around me ordering things like chicken teriyaki. To each their own, I guess, but I really feel like you’re missing out if you don’t order sushi here!
Overall: A wonderful experience. Excellent quality, amazing prices for NYC, and friendly, efficient service. I see myself returning over and over again.

This sushi spot is a great bargain, especially if you choose the omakase option, with delicious fresh sushi and solid service.
Definitely make a reservation for dinner, if you plan to come on a Friday or Saturday night, as there’s not really much of a waiting area and you will have to wait. We had made a reservation and were seated right at the time of our reso.
Our waiter was friendly yet quick, handing us menus with little small talk. We quickly decided on omakase for everyone and some sake and placed our order. He was helpful in talking through the sake options we were debating and gave us insights into the flavor profiles and what might match our omakase best. He also was good about asking about food allergies /​food tastes.
Our omakase came out within 10 – 15 mins of ordering, which was really fast, and I was happy about the amount of sushi and the quality of the fish. There were 12 pieces of sushi (each different) and a roll (spicy tuna for me). My friend had requested no uni and he actually ended up with 3 different sushi pieces than what I had, which I felt like spoke to the artistry of the sushi chefs in picking which fish to serve you. All of the sushi was fresh and delicious — the roll was fine, but not as good as the sushi itself. For the price, however, I felt like this was one of the best omakases I’ve eaten in a while.

Très bonne ambiance et décor! Bonne nourriture et très bonne service; ils sont très chaleureux. Populaire — faites-​vous un reservation et bon appétit!