Yama Fuji Sushi Boat Buffet

AYCE sushi. The guy who ran this ran the one at UC Davis. This one wasnt as good at the one in Davis. Still it was a good $ 15 – 20 for all the salmon you could eat (some a little thin or frozen but whatever). You just have to ask the sushi chefs. Sucks that it had to close. I’m not too picky when it comes to buffets. At least there was no line and unfortunately not many people.
I never got the chinese food since i know that will always suck no matter how fresh it is.
Used to go to this place after the early morning movies to just pig out. We were even there during the grand opening when the service and food was much better.

CLOSED (?)
Passed by and noticed it was shuttered. Things were strewn inside; garbage cans were full outside and lawn was overgrown. On the door there was a permit from the Alameda County Health Department for «Conditional Pass” – basically another way of saying it was dirty enough to be shut down, yet clean enough to open, while on probation.
I can’t help but feel sad for Yama Fuji. I had a great meal in my one visit there, but based on the reviews after my visit, it seemed the restaurant went down hill rather quickly. Perhaps it was the management’s fault, that people stopped caring. Or it was a financial issue that the restaurant was no longer able to offer high quality food/​service with the price it charge. Either way, it is a sad end to the sister restaurant of the proud and well-​loved Yama Fuji of Davis. RIP.

We have been coming to Yama Fuji for about a year now. This place was amazing, and the picture provided is from our first trip to Yama Fuji (by the way, that is a Lion King roll). Sadly, the service and quality of Yama has declined drastically within that one year.
The last time we went (sometime in September on a Friday night) the sushi boats weren’t working and there weren’t many customers there. There was still sushi on the boats, so who knows how long they had been sitting there. We were going to deal with it, but the service was just horrible. We had to ask for someone to come over to get our drink order (again, this place wasn’t packed) and when they finally brought over our drinks, they were warm with no ice in them. Really?
We decided then and there that we were going to leave. We were very upset because we absolutely loved this place and had such a great experience before. We haven’t been back since, and by the looks of the recent reviews it looks like there still is no reason to go back.

I don’t like write a bad review, but today I drive almost 50mins to eat sushi boat buffet. I feel soooooooooo unhappy!!! I remember when I first time to Yama Fuji there has a lot people and fresh food, but today is totally different no car in the parking lot, just few people set around sushi boat (almost 5 people). Crayfish is the black color, crab leg meat is dry, beef is a peculiar taste, sushi is unfresh…
I could continue, I decided to pay my bill and leave

AYCE sushi. I’ve been to much worst, so maybe my expectations aren’t as high as others… About $ 20 per person, yeah I don’t expect a fine dining experience with sushi chefs straight outta japan.
The Sushi Boat area wasn’t working when we went, but that didn’t stop us from getting our sushi fix, all we had to do was order what we wanted. I wasn’t a fan of their Lion King rolls, it wasn’t covered in mayo like the ones I’m used to, so I asked for some Spicy Mayo on the side, that did the trick. Tons of great things to order, Uni, Sashimi, Soft Shell crab, the list goes on. Their buffet section wasn’t the best, but certainly not the worst. As an avid buffet goer, I’m not complaining.
Waiters and waitresses weren’t attentive, but they were friendly.

I came here for lunch with my family. The sushi buffet is $ 20.95 for adults on Saturday, too.
I think this place is only good if you come for the sushi buffet. There is usually platters of sushi already made for customers. However, they offer a mini menu where you can order items from the sushi chef. I found the hand rolls made by the sushi chef to taste better.
I noticed the buffet tables didn’t really have a lot of food per tray. For example, there was only 2 potato croquette or a few chicken skewers. I guess once the items is gone, they will replenish them.
Overall, Yama Fugi has a decent buffet. I would prefer if the buffet trays had more food though.

This place is a freakin joke!
SAVE YOURSELF THE TIME, MONEY & HEADACHE. DO NOT EAT HERE.
I WOULDN’T EVEN COME BACK IF THE OWNER PAID ME.
** the sushi buffet was cool, innovative, different than any other sushi buffet (that would be the only adequate thing about this place). however, they are super stingy with their sushi & if you ask for a special order such as sashimi, they only give 4 pieces at a time. This is a buffet, stop making me come back multiple times b/​c you don’t wanna give me more than 4 pieces
1. THE BUFFET WAS EMPTY. No lie, no exaggeration, no joke… the food was literally cleared out. All you could see were little scraps of the food leftover from who knows how long ago.
2. Multiple guests were complaining as we walked in (which should have raised a big red flag), my mom & myself as well complained that there was no food out!
3. They said it was coming & they were short staffed… no crab, fried rice, soup, chicken, pork, ect.
4. Simple things were not filled prompty or stalked, such as the BUFFET PLATES. I guess this didn’t matter since there was no food to be eaten!!!
5. Only food out to be served was a few slices of random chocolate & mango desserts, sloppy cut up fruit, & some salads.
6. Upon leaving, I did see that a tray of oysters had been brought out & a new tray of tempura.
This «buffet» is so dissapointing & NOT AT ALL WORTH THE $ 21 SPENT HERE FOR DINNER ON A SATURDAY NIGHT. Guests come expecting to indulge & eat all the food they please. Guests want to try ALL different kinds of food & not be confined to one plate of the same meal.
YAMA FUJI, you are a disgrace & hands down the worst buffet I have ever been to.
**** & the icing on the cake! They had a little boy (probably 8 – 10 years old) working the front check-​out. He was ringing out guests, using the cashier, charging credit cards… He was having such a difficult time differentiating the tables from each other & charging the correct amounts. After watching him struggle with a guest for 5 minutes, the guest was literally screaming at this child. He should not even be handling money, let alone working at the restaurant. CHILD LABOR LAW VIOLATION AT ITS FINEST. No one is watching the door or even paying attention to the piles of checks adding up, I actually wonder how many people walked out without paying… They’re lucky I believe in karma & didn’t want to dine & ditch, even though we should have.
After paying $ 65 for basically eating nothing, we walked out disgusted and annoyed.

Super decent sushi buffet. Good portion of sushi rolls floating on the boats. Gotta love the see it before you eat it method. If it doesn’t look fresh, it probably isn’t so let it float on by! Its nice to be able to order from the sushi chefs as well. Or order speciality items from the other chef — to include fried oysters and fried soft shell crab!
The other hot foods and dessert didn’t impress me. That is what is lacking from this 5 star review.
Service was great, the wait staff accommodated our large party. They don’t take reservations so that was something we were worried about. Don’t fret! We came on a Saturday and it wasn’t too packed at all.
If you’re looking for AYCE sushi, this is a decent spot! It’ll definitely calm your craving.

I’m headed to Davis in a couple days, but I’m planning on visiting one of the other 23 982 sushi buffets they have there, so my family went here for lunch today. (I’ve been to this one once before, but apparently never got around to writing a review. Oh, life.)
My brother and I decided that we should each clean out 10 plates of of salmon sashimi as a minimum, so… that’s exactly what we did. I think each plate came with 5 pieces. :D I also got an order of red snapper sashimi, super white tuna sashimi, one of the rolls, and 2 orders of the baked roll (baked salmon on top of a California roll). + a giant plate of oranges and cantaloupe. I think they hate us. :[ But they were really nice.
We did originally try to order a plate of sashimi for the table just to save them from the amount of plates they’d have to go through, but they said they had to give em’ per person and that the most they could give us = a double order, so we went with that. The sashimi is reallyreally fresh, so it was pretty wonderful.
On Mondays + Tuesdays (whole day!), health professionals, students, military personnel + teachers get 15% off. :D! Just bring your ID.

$ 20 dinner buffet with sashimi is not bad! Not the best sushi overall, but can’t complain for the price. I felt bad though for the sushi chef (I guess they were one short and the other came late, but the main guy handled the bustling workload well without taking it out customers). Only thing is they serve the sashimi straight out the fridge, so it’s kinda way cold — makes you want to grab the nigiri floating on the boats. but then the rice gets wasted most the time… But yea, after asking for sake sashimi like 3 times, the chef took the hint and finally gave us a plate of like 10 slices instead of the usual 4 pieces. Good job! Note their rolls are nothing special — especially their Lion Kings — nope, not eating that! Just coming here to stuff my face on sashimi and inari. Overall not a bad place to go if you’re really hungry and you want a lot of fish.

I will keep this brief
Price: fair
Quality: decent for AYCE, sashimi is around B quality but was fresh minus the uni
Quantity: hot buffet and dessert bar is limited, but sushi bar is good
Presentation: for the volume, they are pretty consistent with each roll
Service: I found the people there to be quite accommodating and responsive to our requests, charged fairly and the sushi chefs were fine to me
Some dishes were still thawing out which was disappointing and left a chill feeling in my mouth. I guess I’m not as bothered by this because I have low expectations when going to any buffet
Overall Thoughts
Come hungry with open expectations and who knows you might leave A-​OK

I took my friend here tonight to celebrate his 11 year old belated birthday. We arrived at around 5:30pm and were given a choice to sit by the sushi boats or by the buffet area. We chose to sit by the sushi boats.
After we sat down, within minutes, a lady brought us our bill and laid it next to me. This was before we even started eating. From a service point of view, I didn’t really like this move. I do not know the reasoning behind this gesture, but felt it was uncalled for. Typically in 99.999% of sit down restaurants, you get your bill AFTER you are done with your meal not at the beginning!
I’m docking 1 star from my previous review because of tonight’s experience.

I love this place. The waiters are always so nice and friendly. The sushi are made fresh and on order. I always get the Lion King rolls. Super cheap for the quality. I think they raise the price a bit but it’s worth it (still under $ 20 for weekday lunch).
On Sunday, holidays and dinner (basically when you have to pay more lol) they have crab legs which are super good too!

Very horrible service. I’ve been going to this establishment since it opened and gave its first 5 star review.
So I went up to order sushi at the sushi bar. The employees making sushi told me the sushi I want is already on the sushi boat. I simply replied, «I don’t know what each sushi looks like so how was I suppose to know.» They just pointed at the sushi boat. I then asked for a large plate and was told to get two small plates since it equaled one large plate. I was pretty shocked.
Price for dinner went up to $ 20+ but foods the same. Their «large» plate when ordering sushi is now a medium. Now I’m curious to see how the Davis resto’ is like.
So long Newark resto, never coming back to your location.

Tried this restaurant a couple Fridays ago with the boyfriend, wanting to see if this place was as good as the sushi buffets in Davis. We went 15 – 20 minutes after it opened to beat the dinner rush, and glad we did! They don’t have any beer since they don’t have the license yet, which sucked but understandable. The sashimi were great, but the sushi chefs don’t really give you more (even though you go up to them frequently to order the same thing…) but really not bad at all.
Took one star off because the boyfriend knocked over some little trays and the sushi chefs were clearly rolling their eyes, laughing, and talking about him. Guess they didn’t know I understand Mandarin. But RUDE.
I ordered a Lion King roll and it took FOREVER to come out, and when it did… it was kind of mushy and I couldn’t eat more than 3 pieces. The other sushis were all pretty decent, as were their Chinese food buffet. Sesame balls were gross, but what do you expect?
Around 6:00 — 6:30 when the dinner rush started, it was VERY obvious that the quality of sashimi went down a lot. It went from beautiful fresh-​looking sashimi to dead-​fish looking sashimi that they threw onto our plate. So I guess I’d recommend you to go as early as possible if you don’t want to eat sashimi that looks like it’s been swimming in water for a while.
Also, I had to take down another star because of the oysters. I think I read other reviews that people got sick from the oysters. My boyfriend did not eat any oysters, but I stupidly ate 3 – 4 of them, and consequently got mad shits just half an hour after dinner. Had to go to Nijo Castle to use their restroom. So AVOID THE OYSTERS!!!
Anyways, I really would liked to have given them 4 stars because I think everything up to towards the end of the dinner was pretty good, but rude chefs and my numerous uncomfortable trips to the restrooms because of the oysters = not so great.

One of the worst sushi experiences that I’ve ever had! I was so upset because it sounded so good on Unilocal and I had high standards from eating at the Davis Fuji’s.
Unfortunately I arrived with a party of 4 and weren’t seated though we called in and made reservations. The guy said they take it and put our names down. We got there, the girl up front was like nahhhhh, you got to wait 20 minutes we don’t do reservations– which is already got me upset because we called and were told the okay AND I was starving by them.
We waited and got seated then we started headed over to the sushi bar/​boat. Now there’s a scheme to get to the front. So here’s my suggestion: make sure people don’t cut in front because you’ll never be able to call in your order. The menu is only posted up at the front of the line so you can’t even take a look for yourself. The cooked food takes a while so they tell you to sit and come back 20 minutes later. Talk loudly because the chefs really can’t hear over the counter so that also holds up the line. The boat has minimal selections and looks like left overs of the end pieces you won’t want.
The soft shell crab wasn’t fresh and was mostly just tempura. The surf clams had this strange sour sauce with it and I never got the lion king I ordered. The uni so unfresh that it was just dripping excess liquid everywhere. It just was nothing like Davis and had really limited variety.
Then the actual buffet was just epic fail. The food was barely hot and the crab legs were shell. Only had one fried rice and noodles the rest were just random things thrown together. Really didn’t look fresh or delicious at all. I was highly disappointed by everything– not one thing was good.
Then the table itself! It was made wrong– how does that happen?! I mean the bench was so far away from the table I literally had to stand to eat and I’m not short. It was awkward and built not for your average person. Even my tall friend towering at 6’6 was having trouble with the seating.
Not worth that 20+ bucks, should just have went hotpot instead or paid for actual sushi.

Meow meow meow. This place is the best [sushi] buffet in the Bay Area. It’s as it good as it gets here. I was super excited as I drove by the freeway and saw this place! In my mind, I was like omg, sushi buffet — but then thought again, how good can it be? There was already Newark Buffet and Kaenyama + others in the area that had AYCE sushi, and now another one? Don’t get me wrong, Kaenyama is pretty good when it comes to its sushi, but it’s just too expensive [around $ 27/​person, basically $ 30 after tax/​tip] for a family of 4, let alone a college student. Nonetheless, right now in my book, Yama Fuji is the best buffet in town! I’ve been here almost 10 times! I like Yama Fuji for it’s price [less than $ 20!], food, and service.
Where do you find a buffet that’s less than $ 20 AND is super amazing? HERE.
If you like them on Facebook right now, you can also get 10% off! :)
They offer hot foods like udon, shrimp tempura, oysters, soups, jellyfish and drunken chicken along with sushi (sashimi, rolls, hand rolls, and nigiri). The possibilities are endless I tell you. I hit food coma every single time: C but it’s a good feeling.
My favorites:
Salmon, White Tuna, and Hamachi Sashimi
Ama-​ebi (sweet raw shrimp)
Fried Soft Shell Crab
Dragon Roll
Spider Roll
Unagi, unagi, unagi aka eel (:
As for desserts, they have cream puffs, frozen yogurt, and the yummy yummy mocha and green tea CHEESECAKES! and fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, oranges, grapes).
Yama Fuji is like a dream come true for all you sushi/​buffet fans! Reasonably priced and good.
Not to mention the service and staff are a plus. They’re extremely nice — constantly refilling drinks, taking away dishes, and stocking the food. Shout out to the staff, chefs for being so superb.

While trying to figure out a good sushi buffet around the area, I consulted with my fellow sushi-​loving friends to find out about this place. Boy was I in for a surprise. not only was the fish really good, but the selection of hot foods were pretty impressive too. Usually I tend to stray away from places that have boats… but the amount of food that keeps moving and being taken, the items that float around tend not to have been sitting there long.
The amount of delicious food that I shoved into my face that evening for dinner… I could not even begin to describe. but I suppose really friggin’ delicious would be a decent start. The only downside? Well. even though the price is totally worth it… it’s still a little steep for me to go there on a frequent basis.
Sushi buffets tend to be a little iffy when it comes to quality, but I sure didn’t see any lack of it. Yum… just yum. Can’t wait to come back.

Been here one time and not sure I would go back. I just didn’t agree with how much they charge for the food they served. $ 55 was what we paid for two adult dinners. They even charge for hot tea. Seriously? It was just ridiculously expensive for so-​so sushi rolls and stingy serving of sashimi.
We waited thirty minutes at their mosquito-​infested waiting area. They should have at least bought a mosquito zapper with how much they charge per person.
Anyways, I am not giving them a one star rating, but not going to give them five either. Their food is not bad. Plus, you can order whatever sushi roll you want, aside from what’s riding on the sushi boats circling around the whole sushi bar. I guess we started at the late hour before their closing time, which was why we were scavenging the leftovers of early dinner serving. The line at the sushi order section was a bit long to wait for. So, we decided to be happy with what we could get from the boats.
The gourmet section were all scraps when I got to it. Nobody refilled it because they were about to close. At least, I had a good amount of Hot Corn Soup. I tried a piece or two of what their gourmet section offered, but they were kind of bland.
I would go back during a different time, perhaps their trays are all filled up to the brim, but I just don’t think they deserve the cost they charge. Too expensive. Not worth the wait. Like my star rating says, I’ve experienced a better place. With free hot tea. So, yeah, I’m decided, not going back to this place. I agree with other Unilocalers saying there are people who just don’t know what a real sushi is. My husband and I should’ve gone next door, Nijo Castle.
P. S. What’s up with the hostess wearing a black framed eyeglasses with no glass??? She was just wearing the frame. Creepy Weird!

I was in the Mood for Sushi so I thought I would go try Yams Fuji out. Since Its the Weekend I jumped into my Black Beauty Whip and rolled to Newark. I stashed Beauty in the Back of the Parking lot and rolled in. Yama Fuji was Packed!!! The Word is Out!!! The Wait list was 10 people deep.
I went to the Sushi bar and luckily there was one seat open which I claimed. The Sushi on the Boats was extremely fresh due to the turnover of the food. Hashim is supplied on request. I asked for it and received a plate with 12 Pisces of assorted fish very fresh and tasty. I went to the Counter and asked for Soft Shell Crab and was given a Platter of 4 Deep Fried Soft Shell Crab. Very Yummy!!! I then grabbed several different Nigri and Rolls off the Sushi Boats. The were of good quality.
I didn’t try any of the cooked Chinese food there as I was concentrating on the Sushi Aspect of the Buffet.
I then asked for another Sashimi Plate and was given a bigger one with even more pieces of fish on it. Yum
I ended my meal with fresh Watermelon.
Paid by Visa
And rolled out in Black Beauty Whip.