LAReview
The front door of Yess is an angled wall of unfinished wood set against a metal frame. It’s gorgeous by entryway standards, but quite bad at being a door. You might stand in front of it wondering if you’re looking at a half-finished construction project, or just locked out, before discovering the recessed two-by-four that swings the slab open.
This Japanese tasting menu spot in the Arts District is like its door: beautiful, pretentious, and, most of all, head-scratching. Despite lofty menu descriptions and pristine ingredients, most of what ends up on the plate here falls flat. And while the entrance only causes momentary confusion, an underwhelming meal at Yess will cost you a few hundred dollars, several hours, and probably leave you a little hungry.
Between the muted tones, the meditative Music For Plants soundtrack, and the servers who speak softly and wear robes resembling nurse scrubs, the space could be a boutique sanitarium in Ojai. As the staff takes pains to tell you, every ingredient used is of tip-top quality. These include chanterelle mushrooms that still taste like the forest, and local vermilion rockfish that the chef—who used to run a well-regarded Japanese spot in London as well as a great, now-closed food truck—catches himself.
photo credit: Yess Restaurant
Tragically, those well-sourced plants and sea creatures show up in dishes that are underseasoned, overcooked, or otherwise prepared in ways that don’t do them justice, like the bland water kimchi that tastes closer to water than kimchi, or the flavorless lamb leg “cecina” served with a spinach and beet chip salad straight out of a rec center cooking class.
Even the best dishes, which tend to be the simplest, are just a bit off. Sweet spring peas are pleasant in their unseasoned pea-ness, though the lone pair of chopsticks you're handed with the bowl forces you to pick at them one by one like a game of Operation. During our last visit, rockfish sashimi tasted great with fiery habanero yuzu kosho, but when the rockfish showed up again an hour later as a teriyaki grilled fish head on a bed of juniper branches, the meat was rubbery and dry.
The lackluster execution and precious chef cliches might be less irksome if it weren't for the cost of the meal, which can get out of hand quickly. Sure, there's the baseline $110 six-course tasting menu (five small dishes and one entree) but sticking to this is like booking a Spirit Airlines seat without upgrades. And even after adding on the supplemental $28 grilled mushrooms and a $20 shaved ice, you’ll still think about pulling over for tacos on the drive home.
We get it—Yess is designed to be a fancy restaurant where you're expected to contemplate the peas as much as enjoy them. But if that's your thing, there are better restaurants in LA (or in the Arts District, for that matter) to please those of us who adore avant-garde design, long-winded dish descriptions, and produce so immaculate it cannot be improved upon by human hands. And unlike Yess, they won't have you looking for the door.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Yess Aquatic Water (Kombu Lemonade)
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Water Kimchi
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Vermilion Rockfish Sashimi
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Monk's Chirashi
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Grilled Lamb Leg “Cecina” Steak
Grilled Rockfish & SoCal Shellfish White Bean Stew
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Sangria Kakigori
photo credit: Garrett Snyder
Cacao, Raisins, & Sweet Potato