As it looks like prices keep rising…well, everywhere it seems, I've been hard pressed to find reasonably priced places to eat. Though one may ask; "what is reasonable these days?" During one of my visits to San Diego Bakery & Cafe for a breakfast bolillo, Sushi Yorimichi caught my eye. Opened during the times of Covid in June of 2021, they replaced an old favorite of ours; Thai Papaya. It turned out that the menu featured everything from sushi to ramen to yakitori. There are a couple of initial rules that I follow; if a Japanese restaurant serves a vast variety of dishes, approach the sushi and sashimi with caution. "FOY" Junichi after his visits told me that Yorimichi does not use binchotan for yakitori, so that was off the table, but he was able to provide some recommendations. As it turned out; I thought the cuisine skewed more toward the "diner"/izakaya side of the scale, but the prices, even for back in 2021 was super affordable. And that was nearly three years ago.
It was time return and check things out.
For some reason, the tiny space looks a bit brighter, and even though it has even more "stuffs" decorating the place looks more like a little cozy neighborhood izakaya, like you'd perhaps find in the back alleys of Hiroshima.
The tables are still nicely spaced and the menu is still humongous. The "rolls" take up almost two pages of the menu; which kind of tells you how the place is skewing with regards to sushi and sashimi. I did however notice something on the "specials" menu.
How the heck can you do Tuna Tataki for twelve bucks these days; unless it's just 2-3 slices, so I ordered that.
Well guess what arrived.
My goodness; this consisted of six slices of akami maguro! Fresh, nice texture, no off flavors, refreshing. The young lady asked me if I wanted some wasabi and grated ginger and I answered with an affirmative. This just added another layer of enjoyment. The maguro was seared nicely; the fried onions adding a nice sweet-pungent-crispness; there could have been more ponzu, but this was quite good.
I also saw Chicken Wings on the menu. You could get it with either "Spicy Sauce" or sweet soy. I decided on the sweet soy. At $6.75; I kinda expected 3 wings, but I got 5, and all "flats".
I also loved that the wing tips were attached; I just love gnawing on them, even though the sticky-sweet sauce got all over my hands. The batter was on the crunchy side, almost lacquered, and it held up for the entre meal. The meat was moist, had no off colors or flavors. The sauce was a bit too sweet for my taste though, but still, well worth the price.
And this was lunch as I was quite satisfied. $18.75 for tuna tataki and chicken wings, go figure? There were a few other customers coming in, but all of them got these huge sushi rolls, or ramen. I mentioned the prices at Yorimichi to the Missus. So guess where we had lunch the following weekend?
Yep. The Missus enjoyed the decor!
We started with one of my favorites on my previous visits, the Kawa-Su ($5.75), chicken skin.
A bit more spice than what I'd previously had; which actually helped balance out the sour ponzu tones. I enjoyed the chewy-savory chicken skin.
The Missus wanted the Agedashi Tofu ($6.75), which I wasn't too impressed with during my earlier visits.
This was decent; the tsuyu was much lighter and not as salty, the tofu, slightly crisp from the frying, but nice and creamy inside.
Sadly, the Tuna Tataki ($12) as not as good this time around.
Mainly because of the maguro, which was much more chewy, and had a metallic-tinny tinge to it flavorwise. The slices were also much smaller.
Curious about "grilled" dishes, we ordered the Tan Shio ($7.95).
So, while well seasoned, I can actually do better in our air fryer when seasoned with smoked salt, white pepper, and togarashi. Still, this was not terrible and much better than it looked.
Last up was the Karaage ($7), which I wasn't overly impressed by the last time.
This time, it was quite good; crunchy, the meat tender and moist, and most of all, the soy sauce and other seasoning came thru nicely.
In fact, the Missus and I have talked about returning for an Happy Hour meal and getting the karaage rice bowl to share and some of our favorites. As I mentioned earlier, there are folks whom we've seen ordering the jumbo sized "rolls", which we aren't interested in, nor does the yakitori or ramen interest us. It's those "izakaya" like dishes that do. Admittedly, we're not going to forget our favorites, but in this day of crazy prices, this was a nice respite. In fact, if Yorimichi was in our neighborhood, we'd be regulars.
Sushi Yorimichi
2405 Ulric St.
San Diego, CA 92111
Current Hours:
Sun – Thurs 11am – 830pm
Fri – Sat 11am – 930pm
Egads! This was a bit too much for the both of us. The egg was slightly overcooked, which isn't too bad. But so was the rice. But the thing that really got us was how overly sour; almost puckery, and sweet this was. Also, the menu said it was filled with chicken fried rice, but other than a few tiny pieces, it seems that the bird had flown the coop?
It wasn't fried quite as well, though it was more highly seasoned this time. I swear they put some togarashi on this which I liked. One the negative side, the cut this time around was thicker, with some fairly large pieces. The thicker pieces were dry and only the thin slices made it thru the meal maintaining some crispness. I'm glad they gave me two slices of lemon as I needed them both. Not as good as what we'd had on the previous visit.
My zaru soba arrived looking pretty much the same as always. The tsukemono, mildly pickled, crunchy, which I enjoy with a touch of shoyu seemed so familiar.
As I will usually do when having zaru soba, I have a taste of the tsuyu straight up. And man, this was potent! Very strong dashi, nice soy sauce tones, quite savory. I'd only be doing a one-third "dunk" of my noodles in this! I added all the fresh wasabi and scallions, and a bit of ginger which really added a pleasurable pungency and palate cleansing layer to things.
First thing I hit was the miso soup. I was happy to note that it was flavorful and not watered down.
But that was the only downside to this lunch as the very generous portion of rice was hot and fluffy.
Not much has changed here other than the prices, so here we go!
The soft shell crab roll ($11) is a filling five piece meal. Soft shell crab, real crab and avocado are the main ingredients.
The fried calamari appetizer ($9) is always a good choice. Four pieces of sliced calamari steak breaded in panko, crisply fried and served with (always too much) spicy sauce. 
The Vegetable Delight ($13.50) seems to be a regular choice for me; I found photos from nine different visits. Consistently the same presentation.
Eight pieces of vegetable tempura (potato, carrot, zucchini and onion), salad, eight pieces of Garden Roll, edamame, cold noodle salad, rice and tempura dipping sauce. This is a very satisfying meal with so many varied flavors and textures.
The Combination Bento ($13.95) with pork teriyaki and egg roll is also a good choice.
The Stamina Udon ($13) was a nice meal on one of the (many) cold and rainy days we had early this year. The broth has a light mushroom flavor and the ingredients (chicken, krab, fishcake, shrimp, dumplings, sweet tofu, egg, broccoli) along with the springy udon make this a very filling meal. 
The Shrimp Tempura Bento ($13.50) has five shrimp tempura, lightly fried and served with a house made tartar sauce and a portion of the Seafood Salad (bottom right) which is on the appetizer menu for $5. A nice addition to this bento.
When you first walk in, before turning to the cash register, look at the wall ahead. Daily Lunch Specials from 11-2:30.
Bento Lunch ($9.75) Six pieces of California roll, one piece Inari, three pieces of fried seafood (fish, squid, shrimp), pickled vegetables and rice. This is a very pleasant lunch and good for the budget minded.
The Gyoza Lunch ($9.25) is also really nice. Six meat filled dumplings steamed or deep fried. Salad, rice and (a very good) miso soup. You might notice that miso soup is no longer included with the bento meals; it is $2.50 on the appetizer menu.
I do prefer the gyoza being steamed then quick fried 'pot sticker' style. The deep fried is a nice, crisp texture but I think overwhelms the filling.
The pieces of karaage were large, the batter slightly crunchy, the chicken was on the tougher chewier side. It was also fairly bland in terms of seasoning. Not my favorite version of this.
The broth was interesting, a lot lighter than I would expect for Hokkaido style ramen. It did have a good amount of saltiness and based on what I'd read, there's supposed to be a savory-seafood based component to it, like how Santouka is in Japan. I was looking forward to that, but I really couldn't make that out. As a whole, the broth lacked complexity.
The noodles were nice and springy, of the slightly thicker variety, much like what we'd had at 
Man, check out that chashu. It looked different from the version I'd had on my previous visit. It was still the same overly lean cut, but was also super salty. In fact, I wasn't able to finish it!
The one bright spot were the perfectly textured, springy noodles, that did a great job picking up the broth. Now it would have been great if it wasn't so salty….and I like salty foods!
I know this wasn't the "sesame" version, but the light color was a bit of a shock. The plate included some fairly dry and chewy rice and a green salad with a standard issue wafu style dressing. The greens were fresh and crisp. The tentsuyu, tempura dipping sauce was a must have for the chicken.
The coating was light and crisp, the chicken itself was very moist and tender, a pleasant surprise since this is chicken breast. The flavor was quite mild, thus the dipping sauce is a must for adding savory-umami tones to the dish.
The gyoza and typical seaweed salad (never a favorite of mine) really didn't garner much attention and was quite ordinary.
The rice was cooked nicely, but it had way too much komezu (vinegar) making it extremely sour and I could barely finish half the bowl.
While this was on the chewier side in regard to Hamachi, it was a decently cut. The red jalapeno was not spicy in the least and while the overall flavor was a tad too sour, this was not bad.
I could make out the earthy-sweet truffle oil, though it was rather faint. The kanpachi was cut quite thin and really lacked flavor. Perhaps it couldn't stand up to the truffle, vinegar, and soy? I did think the corn was quite tasty, though none of the fruits went with this dish. Also, check the paper-thin slice of the radish in comparison to the fish.
I cracked up as two dropper bottles were delivered to my table: one with soy sauce and the other with ponzu. Geez, trying to be fancy? They also put plastic "wings" covering the nori on each side of the hand roll.
