Yanako

This is my favorite sushi place in Philly! Everything is so FRESH and beautifully assembled. They make their own soy sauce, which has a delicious, smoky flavor. The raw fish is always fresh and flavorful, never chewy. I highly recommend the Manayunk roll! It has so many different flavored that come together and it’s so delicious.
They also serve Thai food here — I have only tried the spring rolls, but they were FANTASTIC.
The service is always great, a tad slow during busy times but the sushi is well worth the wait.

Visited on New Years Eve for dinner, which it was fairly busy so I suggest making reservations. A special holiday menu was available and offered a multitude of well crafted options without losing the flavor of Yanako.
Our dinner started with two holiday appetizers: tempura spicy shrimp and steamed oyster, which was a great choice to start the night. The tempura spicy shrimp is similar to bang bang shrimp with less spice and better flavor. I originally was not too excited about the steamed oyster, but the serving in broth with lemon grass elevated the dish.
For the entrée part of dinner, we ordered the Manayunk roll, a holiday special seafood roll, and vegetable roll, and were not disappointed. All 3 rolls tasted very good, however I noticed a few cuts were uneven in portioning, but not overly noticeable difference in size.
On a previous visit we had ordered the Manayunk roll and vegetable roll, so from experience these were must order items. The holiday special seafood roll sounded interesting from the description as it was topped with popcorn lobster, which was similar to a very crunchy tempura. As always, we were not disappointed in trying a new item at Yanako and the only surprise was how large the roll was!
I will plan on returning in the future and look forward to our next night out at Yanako.

Food here is mediocre except for the sushi. It is definitely one of the better places to get sushi, but it is also quite pricey here too.
If you want to get quality sushi, this is the place to go, but also be prepared to pay $ 8 for 6 pieces of sushi.

The sushi is good — very fresh and I love how they flavor their rice. Downside — the speciality rolls are crazy expensive and are average at best. Better sushi restaurants in the city have cheaper specialty rolls.
The regular rolls are tastier in my opinion and worth the money.
Service was below average — we felt rushed at the end even though it was 15 minutes before closing.
Biggest upside of this place was that they served Chabaa Thai. However, they shrunk that menu over the last couple of weeks to barely serve a few Chabaa dishes. I mean how do you remove red curry from Chabaa’s menu?!
All in all its a solid 3 stars. No more and no less.

I went here last night with a couple of friends for a bite to eat. Yanako is a Japanese restaurant that also serves Thai food. I love Thai food.
My friend suggested that I try the Penang curry and I jumped on it. The curry was delicious and a little bit spicy, we ordered Thai iced tea because Mother Nature must have been baking something special in her oven and it warmed us all.
Yanako is a nice spot, rustic and comfy. I noticed that it was more of a date spot and they had a tatami room located in the front window.
All in all, it was a good night (even thou my friend never received her brown rice) and I will definitely return.

Really like this place.
Very fresh fish and neatly prepared dishes.
One of a very few Japanese restaurants in America that actually do a good job of mimicking sushi.
I like the interior of the restaurant.
It gives out a ‘we’re trying really hard to look authentic’ vibe.
It’s my new go-​to place whenever I feel like some good fresh sushi.

Yanako is amazing.
Usually I don’t like going to Japanese restaurant in America because I of Japanese Know real taste of Japanese. But when I sow some pictures here in Unilocal,I was interested. They were using rare fish in America such as Iidako, hotaruika, and kohada.
Unfortunately there aren’t them then. I guess It was different season.
In spite of that, I felt here is most close to real sushi of Japan I have ever been sushi restaurant in American, I have had only several time, though. But I definitely think.
I love all of here. Fresh and beautifulsushi with great way to cut fish. TheSkill of the chef is great.
The ambiance and the design are great, calm, and. modern and old, nice Balance of the interior. simple and natural like a Japan house.
However I have one that’s soy source should change another one. It doesn’t much a little to sushi.
Don’t forget is BYO. I’ll definitely bring my Japanese sake next time!
This Christmas season, this town is a pretty cute :) It’s a little far from center city but it’s worth going to:)
But to be honest I miss sushi in Japan lol If you want to eat real sushi you should go to Fukuoka prefecture in Japan. I promise that you can experience amazing sushi at a pretty reasonable price.

Five stars purely for the fact that when we were served our takoyaki, it didn’t burn our mouth right away and I got to enjoy the flavors.
This was our second time visiting. It is a great place for dates or even with the family. The first time my boyfriend’s mom came with us and they accommodated all of her allergies, which was quite a few. The sushi I think is reasonably priced, especially for the quality and it’s byob! We haven’t tried that yet but next time we will definitely come prepared.

What the hack happened to Yanako? This sushi restaurant was my go-​to for dine in and take out. Tonight I ordered 7 rolls only to find out that they shorted me one. I ordered and paid through the eat-​24 app so I can’t imagine how an entire roll was skipped. The host was respectful and had the staff complete my order, however, it took 20 minutes for the vegetable tempura roll.
The real reason for my recent dissatisfaction is the lack of portions. It seems like with every month their rolls shrink. Here’s what $ 54 of sushi at yanako looks like.
Otherwise the quality and atmosphere of Yanako is fantastic.

Sushi is fantastic! This place is byob so that saves you a little on the alcohol, but they will charge you more for the sushi so it evens out. Also an order of nigiri (which comes with 2 pieces at most places) only comes with one piece FYI.

My friend suggested we visit one of their staple eating establishment for lunch. I posed no argument. The restaurant is decorated nicely with a warm cozy casual feel, yet has a hint of romance with the optional «take your shoes off and sit on the floor» Japanese style dining. It’s customary for me to let the person taking me to their favorite place to decide on the food. I was not let down with the tofu green curry and seven seas roll. The curry is rich and creamy and it goes down with such a comforting and soothing feeling. The tofu was firm and fresh and the peppers and bamboo shoots were a perfect compliment. They just nail it with a calculated blend of spices and heat to make this dish one of the bomb curries around Philly.
As for the sushi, being half Japanese I always am a bit apprehensive about eating at a sushi place where they sell multiple style Asian foods, because 9 times out of 10 it’s not run by a Japanese owner or Japanese chef. Unfortunately, this mentality came from my mom and always lies in the back of my head, although usually doesn’t sway me enough to try a sushi spot my friends recommend, even though i can see it’s not Japanese owned and operated. My friend told me the back story of how the Japanese restaurant and the Thai restaurant merged to make Yanako. With that new piece of information I was more than interested and even excited to have a mixed Thai and Japanese lunch.
The Seven Seas roll was a very good choice to compliment the curry and rice. It comes with tuna, yellowtail, cucumber, tobiko, and tempura crunch on the inside and avocado and spicy Aioli sauce on the outside. The fish was fresh, mouth watering and the roll was tasty all round. It’s well balance texture combined with the right amount of spice and crunch make this roll a winner even though it’s a tick more than $ 15. With the green curry, the total for lunch came to $ 34 with tip. Split between two people, it’s a knockout lunch for a reasonable price.

Well, the food is ok but nothing special. We place is zoo. Typical manyunk 20 shouting to be heard constantly. Staff couldn’t care less. We won’t be back.

I’m not really understanding the hype of this place, but we did enjoy our sushi here last week. Byo was very nice as well. I wouldn’t say it was anywhere near best sushi I’ve had and for the price of the speciality rolls, I would much rather go into center city and get some real sushi variety going on. I guess they had to make up for lack of bar revenue?
They were definitely good despite my gripes. The ocean one (with spicy scallop) was our favorite being fresh and tasty. Other rolls we got were pretty subpar and the seaweed salad we got was pretty typical and not so newly made. Service was pretty scattered but servers were nice at least. Overall I just don’t want to pay $ 18 for a specialty roll when there’s nothing special to it and freshness not kicking you in the face good. This ain’t New York or Cali guys, take notes from the other better sushi places in Philly.

Rule of thumb: don’t go to sushi place on Monday. Most places have not replenish their fish after previous weekend.
Fish was okay, though they lacked toro. Sushi rice was a little bit dried (I guess it was made from the last portion of the batch). Tamago was good.
This is solid spot. I will come back, but not on Monday.

Another delightful find in Manayunk. Right now, we are very lucky, as a Thai restaurant is also operating within this Japanese restaurant. My selections from both countries were outstanding. I started with a perfectly balanced chicken Tom Kah soup. The coconut milk was not too heavy, and the line was not too strong. But dinner was the stunner! Salmon teriyaki beautifully cooked and presented with bok choy and grilled asparagus. Sometimes teriyaki sauce is too salty. This was also very balanced… A perfect mix of salty and sweet.
The waiter was outstanding as well. He played along with our corny jokes and was extremely attentive.
Atmosphere is warm and modern. We ran out of room, but there is a dessert menu. Next time I intend to get the flourless chocolate cake with green tea ice cream!

Came here for restaurant week. They have great presentations for their food. I would give them 6 stars for that alone.
Love the décor of the establishment.
I must say there is nothing that I don’t like about this place. That said it didn’t really WOW me.
This is a solid choice if you are in the area. Parking can be a little difficult to find. Tip: don’t park on main st. Try and find parking in the back near the church.

We decided to take a tour of manayunk on Friday night to try out as many places as we could in a few free hours and this place was suggested by the nice waitress at our first stop. We figured we were new to town and we would have a couple drinks and a couple apps along the way to get a feel for places and go back for a full dinner another night.
We wee greeted by a nice lady at the door and she asked if we had reservations which we replied no. We asked if we could still dine and she said yes of course. At this moment a group of ladies walked in and she asked them the same thing. They did have a reservation and were promptly seated while we were just left by the door. After a few minutes standing by ourselves we asked if we could sit at the bar, which was permitted, however the seats we sat ourselves to were the wrong ones apparently so we were moved over to other seats.
We then found out it was byo which is cool and good l know for the next time so we just ordered a spring roll off the Thai menu and a spicy tuna off the sushi menu. Both were very good. The spring roll was fresh and not too greasy and the spicy tuna was the perfect spicy and very fresh.
Being a Friday night and without any drinks on the ticket our check was going to be the smallest of our waiters night however he was very friendly and prompt with all of our food and any additional needs we had so we look forward to coming back with a reservation next time.

The hostess was busy on her phone before greeting us as we awkwardly stood, half in, half out the restaurant. When she was attentive, she was extremely accommodating. I’m under the impression that this place is normally packed for dinner, but we luckily swooped in while the tables were being turned and managed to snag a table for three — my sister, my mom, and me.
We ordered a plain veggie udon, green curry, jumbo lump crab fried rice, and a sushi roll (I don’t remember which one). While the sushi was excellent — the fish itself was very cold and lacked any ‘fishy’ flavor — everything else to me was just okay. I think if you prefer your food to be a bit on the sweeter side, you would thoroughly enjoy this place. My mom had to doctor up the udon with a bit of wasabi and soy sauce to make the udon more savory. I think green curry is typically sweet, so I didn’t mind and thoroughly enjoyed it. The fried rice was great — you could see tons of pieces of crab, and I thought it was well worth the money for such an expensive fried rice dish.
The interior is beautiful, albeit a bit cramped (closer to a NYC restaurant in terms of how ‘cozy’ it is). In the front, there’s a table that seems like it’s a traditional Japanese dinner table, where you sit on the floor (which is elevated there), which looked really cool.
I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to return, but it was a pleasant meal with pleasant servers. The food was a tad bit sweet for me to be excited about this place, though.

Good news first or bad? The bad news is the agendashi tofu was pretty bad. The ponzu/​dashi soy they used was good. though The tofu (4 large pieces for $ 6) was really bad. It’s supposed to be golden brown and a slight crisp, but these were gelatinous and very unappetizing. It’s as if they coated it gelatin and fried it. We had to send it back. It was that gross. However, the waitress was nice enough to remove it from the bill, so that was the plus. The lunch bento box was a decent size.

I don’t want no mediocre…
Wow can I stray far from saying this place blows… I can see why after living in the neighborhood for three years I never went. Yes the décor is nice, but you gotta give me more if you are going to charge an arm and a leg for food.
How dare I waste thirty five dollars of my money, during restaurant, week to try this place.
Mind you our server was a sweetheart, and could tell the manager on last night was working his ass off, the GM or owner really should be ashamed. This place is way to understaffed.
The restaurant was packed, and mind you a meal that should have took no more than an hour and a half lasted for more than two.
As for food quality, the spring rolls and tofu were alright. However, they were unimpressive as I could have made both at home…
Oh that avocado salad that I had… sucked. The only redeeming thing about it was the avocado… otherwise to serve a salad with romaine lettuce and little is not acceptable at this price… oh yeah that crappy ginger dressing was so watery, Sigh/​
Then the main course, chirashi. A plate of fish over rice, but can I add, that my shrimp on my fresh fish plate was previously frozen… you know that cheap shrimp cocktail kind of taste. The sashimi fish was also far from fresh, and the sushi rice it was over had way too much rice vinegar. Yuck!
Finally, for desert green tea ice cream… probably the only thing redeeming about the meal… but why in the hell would you garnish ice cream with edible flowers… I was lost.
On a final note, the green tea was so weak I almost sent it back.
Please don’t waste your money or time.