Yamasan Sushi and Grill

Yamasan Sushi and Grill (https://www.yamasanorlando1.com/) is a beautiful little Japanese restaurant that has been around for a decade or so, in the Mills Park complex on Mills Avenue, just north of Virginia Drive.  I have driven by it literally hundreds of times, but never stopped in to eat until this past Monday, a rare weekday off.  My wife and I were already nearby and craving sushi, so we decided to try it, not knowing anything about the place.  (Longtime readers know I usually research restaurants and study menus in advance, but not always!)  Anyway, I’m so glad we did, since we had a wonderful experience.

Yamasan’s menu is absolutely huge, and they have all kinds of Japanese food, not just sushi.  They have hot and cold appetizers, bento boxes, noodle and rice dishes, poke bowls, hibachi grill options, and even a Japanese/French fusion menu.  The thing is, I’m a roll guy.  I love ornate sushi rolls, especially with raw fish and lots of ingredients to keep things interesting.  Most of the “Yamasan special rolls” are in the $15-$25 range, and some are even more expensive than that, so I figured it would be an expensive meal, but probably worth it.

However, our lovely server Maggie let us know that Yamasan recently began offering an all-you-can-eat menu, where for the price of $47.95 per person, you had a pretty large variety of selections to choose from — not the entire multi-page menu, but still a lot.  There is a 9o-minute time limit, and everyone in the party must choose the all-you-can-eat option.  Even my wife was on board, because if you were even thinking about ordering three rolls, you come out ahead, and we each ordered more than that!  If you show up hungry, it would be foolish not to.

I took the liberty of photographing both sides of the all-you-can-eat menu, since it isn’t available on Yamasan’s website as of now:

I am going to include the regular menu prices with each description below, just to show you how much money we saved by doing all-you-can-eat instead of ordering a la carte.

I started out with the tuna carpaccio appetizer ($21.95 on the regular menu), which was very small, but it’s all good, because we had a lot more food coming.  This was two pieces of lightly seared tuna topped with creme fraiche, black caviar, grated pecorino Romano cheese, fleur de sel (very posh sea salt), truffle oil, and capers, with wild field greens drizzled with raspberry dressing on the side.  Needless to say, there’s a lot going on in this little app!  It was so magnificent, I implored my wife to try the second piece, and she liked it so much she ordered another portion for herself (also $21.95). 

She got one piece of escolar sashimi ($12 for three pieces on the regular menu), and I got three pieces of mackerel sashimi ($12 for three pieces on the regular menu).  I love mackerel, because it is always lightly pickled, and I grew up eating pickled herring (one of the foods of my people). 

This was the Japanese mentaiko udon ($18.95 on the regular menu), a decadent noodle dish from the Japanese/French Fusion part of the menu.  These super-thick, super-chewy udon noodles were topped with salty salmon roe that pop in your mouth, finely shredded nori (roasted seaweed), more grated pecorino Romano cheese for an umami punch, and what I’m guessing was salty, punchy cod roe mayonnaise on the right side of the photo below.  That’s what they put on the mentaiko fries I tried many years ago at Susuru, anyway.  This was another dish that was as gorgeous as it was tasty.

I loved everything about this, and I was even considering ordering it before we discovered the all-you-can-eat menu (and that this was included in it).  Again, my wife impressed me by trying it and pleasantly surprised both of us by liking it.  But what’s not to like… unless you already don’t like salty, fishy flavors?

The rolls started to show up next.  This was a Dynamite roll ($11.95 on the regular menu), with tuna, yellowtail, wasabi, and scallions, a nice opening act for the superstars about to arrive.  It was dynamite!

And here’s a gorgeous tray with three of my selections: the Salmon Tower roll in the front, the Capitan roll in the middle, and the Unforgettable roll in the back.  Lord have mercy!The Salmon Tower roll ($19.95 on the regular menu) is pressed into that rectangular shape, and it includes green shiso (perilla) leaves mixed with sushi rice, smoked salmon, salmon roe, kani (krab), mayonnaise, and eel sauce.  I wasn’t sure what shiso/perilla leaves were supposed to taste like, but my research tells me the flavor is a cross between basil and mint — both good flavors to go with the salty, smoky richness in this roll.

The very traditional Capitan roll ($18.95 on the regular menu) includes fried calamari, avocado, Cajun seasoning, topped with smoked salmon, wasabi, creme fraiche, mango salsa, and eel sauce.  Okay, so it isn’t traditional at all, but I love fusion cuisine, and I already said I’m a sucker for sushi with a lot going on!

I really should have turned the tray around for a better pic of the Unforgettable roll ($18.95 on the regular menu) in the back, but I forgot.  Yes, I forgot the Unforgettable roll.  I’m here all week, folks.  Anyway, it includes spicy tuna and barbecue eel, and it is topped with avocado, seafood sauce, eel sauce, crispy fried noodles, and masago (red flying fish roe).  Each of these was mighty fine.

Here were my wife’s first two roll choices, which curiously came out some time after my first three.  In front, you can see the Mango Tango roll ($17.95 on the regular menu), with tempura shrimp and cream cheese, topped with mango, shredded coconut, and eel sauce.  It’s always a crowd-pleaser.Behind it is the Sweet Sixteen roll ($17.95 on the regular menu), with shrimp, krab, cream cheese, and a rice paper wrapper, topped with mango and strawberries and drizzled with a “mayo sauce.”  I like some sweet flavors with my sushi, like eel sauce, and I’m never sad to see mango show up, but that one was a little too desserty for me.

This was her next roll, the Lover roll ($18.95 on the regular menu), with krab salad, topped with tuna, spicy mayo, a tiny Hokkaido scallop, and red caviar (masago) on top.  There was something else in this Lover roll that wasn’t listed that was brown and had kind of a funky flavor that didn’t fit.  At first, I feared the chef sneaked mushrooms into this roll, because it definitely wasn’t a fish.  The menu listed tempura flakes, but we didn’t see any or feel their familiar, pleasing crunch.  It turned out that it was inari, also known as bean curd, or fermented and fried tofu, a common sushi ingredient which she likes, but I don’t — especially when I’m not expecting it.  But once she got too full, I poked the inari out of each piece with a chopstick and dutifully finished the rest of the Lover roll.

And this was my last stand: the Dream of Dream roll ($20.95 on the regular menu), which you have to say in the old-timey newsman voice of the late, great David Lynch, as you can bet that I did.  It was a fitting way to end our unexpected feast at Yamasan, with tuna, salmon, shrimp, krab, tempura flakes, regular AND spicy mayo, eel sauce, and black caviar.  Back in 2009, David Lynch quoted The Upanishads on Twitter, in those days before it became one of the worst places on the Internet: “We are like the dreamer who dreams & then lives in the dream.”  Later, in his brilliant third season of Twin Peaks in 2017, Lynch’s character Gordon Cole had a dream in which Monica Bellucci repeated the line.  And that’s all I could think of while I ate the Dream of Dream roll.   

So if you add up the prices of everything we got, had we ordered a la carte:

Two tuna carpaccio appetizers ($21.95 x 2) +
Escolar sashimi ($12 for three pieces, since we would not have been able to order just one piece) +
Mackerel sashimi ($12 for three pieces) +
Japanese mentaiko udon ($18.95) +
Dynamite roll ($11.95) +
Salmon Tower roll ($19.95) +
Capitan roll ($18.95) +
Unforgettable roll ($18.95) +
Mango Tango roll ($17.95) +
Sweet Sixteen roll ($17.95) +
Lover roll ($18.95) +
Dream of Dream roll ($20.95) =
A whopping $232.45 (plus tax and tip)!

We would never run amok like that if we were ordering off the regular menu… or would we?  I always say we know how to party, and why doesn’t anyone ever party with us?

But instead, we paid $47.95 x 2 = $95.90 (plus tax and tip, of course).  YOU’RE WELCOME.  And thank you to Yamasan Sushi and Grill!

Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I am thrilled to report that our first visit to Yamasan surpassed my wildest dreams (or dreams of dreams).  I would happily go back, because even if it isn’t a cheap dinner, you will eat like a king and go home satisfied and ready to crash for the night.  I feel like we got our money’s worth, and then some.  And it’s such a nice little restaurant (with comfortable booths!), I would recommend it even if you don’t go with the all-you-can-eat option, even though I personally think it’s a no-brainer.  Ask for Maggie — she was the only server on duty, so she was slammed, but she will take the best care of you, as she did for us.