Yamamori Sushi & Grill

Welcome back to the Santa Cruz Food Blog - this time around, we're doing Japanese food in Scotts Valley at Yamamori. Located at the north end of town (Granite Creek exit), it's in the same shopping center as Carl's Jr. and the SV Market.

Yamamori website

It was a family dinner with mom (a long time blog reader - Hi, mom!) and daughter, Kelly. Being the picky eater of the family, if she likes this place, then anyone else would too. Not crowded at all at 6pm Friday night.

They've done a nice job with the decor with cozy booths around the perimeter and the sushi bar in the middle. Check out the cool orb lights! Very clean and well lit.

When you order a dinner, you get salad (with Miso dressing) and Miso soup. Little cubes of tofu and chopped scallions are hiding in the salty broth. Fun to test your chopstick skills picking those out. Each table also gets a tray of edamame.

Kelly ordered (and always orders) the Chicken Katsu/Veggie Tempura combo dinner ($16.95). I had to be quick snapping the photo since she dived right in. It's a huge plate and has the panko-breaded chicken, rice and tempura veggies. She's getting a lot better at chopsticks, but they will give you a fork if you ask for it.

Mom got the Chicken Teriyaki with Tempura Veggies combo ($16.95) and look at all that food. She said it was very good and needed a box to take some home.

I went with some sushi - Banana Slug Roll ($8.95 top) and California Roll ($4.45). The Slug roll had avocado, banana, mango and yam tempura and mixed well with soy sauce. The sweet, salty flavors were uniquely delicious. The Cali roll was very fresh and I could really taste the crab meat.

Service was fast and courteous and our drinks were always full. We had a Groupon coupon, but the fine print said we needed to make reservations for it. They also said it didn't work on Fridays, which was not mentioned on the coupon printout. Buyers beware if trying this.

All scores out of 10:
Food: 8
Service: 7
Atmosphere: 7
Price: 7
Overall: 7.25