No matter how many different cuisines from all different countries in the world, my true love for the food would still remains to be Japanese food. You gotta love the food you grew up with, the kind of food with warm memories of your mom and grand-mom cooking for you. And when I miss that kind of food, thankfully, there are many places I can go and get them! One of them is located in NJ, right across from George Washington Bridge. They are located next to shops and cafes, and with a good amount of parking.
Yamagata is all the way to the right, having a corner lot helps with bringing in natural light. They use bamboo as privacy screen all around, so that you don’t see the customers from the outside until you get close enough.
The entrance is a bit small, if you go during the rush hour, there might be a wait with not much space to wait for a table. We arrived towards the end of the lunch hour on a weekend. They only had one table and two seats at the counter left. We took the table seating.
The inside is not big, but not too small. They have sushi counter with seating, although not much seating there. The interior is rather simple, a bit outdated, but homey and cozy. No-frills here, keeping it simple. They seem quite popular with locals, people kept coming in while we were there. Only about the time we were finishing up with our lunch, more tables became available.
Our server brought us complimentary hot tea, which is always a plus. I wish all restaurants provides nice hot green tea with their meal… And they do give you free refills on the tea, even though it could be a challenge during a peak hour. We had to grab a staff to get the refill once, but after it calmed down in the restaurant, a staff came around with a pot of tea can offered refill to each table.
We were hungry for some good, traditional Japanese food. My hubby went with Chirashi ($18.50), which comes with a choice of miso soup or asari clear soup from their lunch menu. My husband chose Asari Clear Soup, of course, being a shelfish lover. Asari is a manilla clam, and the soup had a handful of clams in it. The soup was nice, and it is great to have more option than just miso soup.
The lunch menu items also come with a salad. It was just an ordinary salad, nothing special, but fresh, chilled and refreshing on a hot day.
The Chirashi was very pretty, like shiny jewels sparkling on top of sushi rice. Another noticeable thing about this item was its size. It was quite small… Not only the size of the beautiful container, but also the portion of the sashimi pieces. From my experiences at other restaurants, chirashi usually have enough amount of sashimi pieces to cover the rice. But in this case, you can clearly see the rice underneath it from all direction.
The sashimi pieces were certainly fresh, not fishy at all, and very tasty. They had several kinds of sashimi pieces, but just one of each kind.
It had most of the basic topping for chirashi, such as tuna, cooked shrimp, salmon, egg, etc. It was delicious, and with high quality ingredients, but I didn’t think the price and portion matched with one another.
It seems like I made a better choice at ordering. I went with their bento box offering. I was in a mood for some old-fashioned grilled fish, so I chose Bento with Mackerel ($16.50). This lunch item comes with miso soup, without any choice of different kind of soup. The miso soup was just a-ok.
The great thing about this bento is that they come with miso soup and salad, but it also come with three pieces of sushi!!! You don’t get to choose what kind of sushi it is, but I was so happy to get these sushi pieces! They brought this to the table as an appetizer, before the bento was ready. So, I didn’t have to rush to eat this, which was nice. And they were delicious, just melt in your mouth…
And then the bento box arrived… It was HUGE! It was at least twice the size of the chirashi. My husband was completely jealous of my bento box, as you can imagine. I didn’t think it was going to be this big, I was expecting something much smaller, so this was great!
It came with loads of side dishes as well, much more than I thought it would. How awesome! It had two kinds of seaweed salad, very fresh and tasty. It had a cold tofu with sauce, refreshing and I absolutely love tofu…
And yes, heart-shaped rice! What! I guess I don’t need to wonder nor question of their love for me with that. It had a few black sesame seed on top.
Then, more filling kind of side dish, assortment of tempura. They had a small bowl with tempura dipping sauce on the side as well.
It had shrimp, pumpkin and sweet potato tempura pieces. Shrimp was super plump, lightly fried and awesome! Pumpkin was nice too, still had good texture left but soft enough. Sweet potato had solid texture too, a bit harder than I am used to, but it was ok. I prefer the pumpkin and sweet potato to be more on the softer side though.
And then the mackerel…my goodness it was excellent! It was exactly what I wanted. It had two pieces of mackerel, perfectly grilled with just the right amount of seasoning. Not too salty but just right. Fluffy and flaky, really nice! They were big pieces too.
After having so much food, it was time for ice cream. Did I mention their lunch menu comes with ice cream? I know, crazy, right? But, it was a small scoop of ice cream, so it was more of a pallet cleanser than a real dessert. They had red bean ice cream (no choice on flavor). A great way to end the pleasant lunch!
Their bathroom is located towards the back, one uni-sex bathroom. Kind of tight space, so if someone is in the bathroom, not much space to wait for the person to come out. Inside the bathroom is quite roomy, but it was not very clean… since we were there at the end of lunch rush, I assume staffs haven’t had the time to go in there to clean?
It was a good, tasty, filling lunch! And it certainly hit the spot. The staffs were polite and efficient, not overly friendly but helpful and welcoming. We will be sure to return for more, and I think I know what my husband is going to order at our next visit…LOL.
Yamagata – 1636 Palisade Ave, Fort Lee, NJ 07024