Restaurant Review

Yamato,a Japanese restaurant located on the Commonwealth Avenue bus stop, is very convenient for Boston College students, as they don’t have to venture out on the T to gorge themselves on Yamato’s delicious fair. The unique gimmick of this sushi restaurant is their all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. However,  the catch of this $20 per person deal is that if your party fails to eat absolutely everything on the table, the items will be individually charged at the normal menu prices.

  A few key appetizers truly stand out: the steamed gyoza and the shrimp shumai. Both are dipped in wasabi and soy sauce, and are cooked to tantalizing perfection. The steamed gyoza includes wonton wrappers filled with a meat and veggie mixture. It is perfectly steamed—the wrapper is firm, but just soft enough to work well with the juicy meat inside. The shrimp shumai is a half of a wonton wrapper filled with a mixture of breadcrumbs and shrimp, shaped in a tiny bowl form. It is pleasantly surprising to find that the shrimp are in rather large pieces, embedded for added texture.

Other delectable starter plates include the sweet potato maki roll and the spicy crabstick maki roll. The sweet potato maki roll has a thin layer of rice and seaweed on the outside and a sweet potato blend with tempura coating. The tempura is just noticeable and delightful to the point where it provides a slight crunch, introducing patrons to the perfectly mixed blend of cinnamon, sugar, and sweet potato on the inside. The spicy crabstick maki roll is made from imitation crabmeat. It has generally the same composition as the sweet potato roll except the mixture is, to great delight, a chunky blend of large pieces of the “meat” and a slight hint of mayonnaise.

  A few outstanding entrees are the Chicken Katsu, Spicy Beef Noodle in Soup, Beef Teriyaki, Crazy Maki, Philadelphia Maki, and Boston Maki.

  The Chicken Katsu is batter-coated chicken served with brown sauce, along with miso soup, salad, and rice. The crunchy exterior of the fried batter competes with the slightly sweet yet tangy brown sauce to send anyone who likes Japanese infused American cuisine to hog heaven.

Perfect for a cold and blustery day, the spicy beef noodle in soup is soul-warming. The beef has the slightest bit of red when it comes out, allowing it to cook to more inside of the soup. The noodles, too, are perfectly plump and ready to slurp.

Other delicious varieties of beef include the traditional beef teriyaki, smothered with a thick brown sauce and infused with sesame seeds and rice on the side. The beef is cooked to the ultimate tenderness, and combined with the sauce, it gives true meaning to the word “umami.”
Diving into their sushi, the crazy maki features all the usual ingredients—shrimp tempura, avocado, cucumber, and tobiko—and is thickly drizzled with spicy mayonnaise. The richness of the mayonnaise and the avocado, combined with the crispiness of the shrimp battered in tempura, along with the freshness of the cucumber, will leave anyone sighing in delight. Meanwhile the Philadelphia Maki, with uncooked salmon and cream cheese, is reminiscent of a bagel with lox and chives. Finally, the Boston Maki is for the less adventurous—a cooked shrimp roll with avocado that’ll be the perfect mouth-popper for a final cool-down bite.

 Yamato has a very diverse menu ranging from salads, to sashimi, to vegetarian rolls, to soups. It will please anyone searching out quality Japanese cuisine.