Lunched with colleagues at this place recently. I've passed by it many a time, but have never bothered to look inside. (Sorry for the cheap poetry lol)
The front-of-the house person greeted us in a nice good way and the four of us were promptly given a table by the window. They also have booth seats that look pretty comfortable, as well as bar seats by the rotating sushi conveyor belt that I always find dizzying to look at. From the decor you can tell they have put some thought into doing up the place nicely. Encouraged, I was rather hopeful about the food.
We scanned the set lunch menu. As other reviewers have shown, they have lunch sets ranging from the $60-something to $88 range. We all decided to go for the $88 set that has a sushi combo and a bowl of wheat noodles/udon. I choose the noodles with beef and 2 of my colleagues went for the tempura with noodles/udon.
Appetizer was a leafy salad all round. It was in a small dish with a few leaves and one or two halved cherry tomatoes. "So far so ok", I thought. The dressing was the standard affair and the leaves were more or less fresh. Then came the sushi combo. Maybe I was too hungry/expectant, but I wasn't paying much attention to the plate before me and I've forgotten how many pieces of sushi there were - it was either 5 or 6 max. There was raw shrimp, scallop, salmon (I think), octopus and something else (time to bring a good camera along for respectable reviews hehe). Taste-wise, the quality of the fish was so so, and the rice was ok - at least it was not straight out-of-the-fridge cold. It was overall nothing to write home about but a teeny bit better than average. I like the way the pieces were good pop-in-your-mouth-in-one-go sizes, so no embarrassing bits of rice falling everywhere scenarios.
Then came the noodles. Swimming in an elegant but small bowl, the wheat noodles were lifeless strands of bland. Literally strands, as I swear I would have been able to count how many there actually were had I the luxury of time and solitude. The beef was short thin wisps, and I found I had to eat them piece by piece to make them last. There were also 4 or 5 leaves of veggies, a whole small mushroom cut into thin slices (hurray!), and an altogether non-descript broth finished off the experience. My heart sank as I emptied the precious contents sans soup in less than 2 minutes. The four of us all took less than 30 minutes to finish the meal from ordering to finishing.
My heart hit the bottom of the sea when, after they cleared the table, we were not asked about our preference for coffee/tea, etc. We were simply left alone. "No hope for dessert then", I thought. At least they were generous and attentive with the serving of green tea.
I left the place with that empty and unsated feeling which I absolutely hate, especially that I forked out a grand $100 for this "half-meal". I am a glutton I'll admit, but the overly scroogeyness of the place has definitely done the job of making Yuyu a one-time visit for me only.