Kaiten zushi Euro style

In nineties London, as in most major Western cities, sushi is as standard a lunch as a ham and pickle sandwich or a cream cheese bagel. Riding the current fascination with all things Japanese, Yo! Sushi is a brand of unique Japanese-cum-Western sushi bars popping up all over London, turning raw fish into hard cash as never before. Oddly enough, though, founder Simon Woodroffe isn't a great Japanophile, and his interests aren't focused entirely on fish. It appears that Yo! Sushi came about initially because the name sounded good.

"I wanted to do a brand called Yo! and it just happened that it was a sushi bar in its first manifestation," Simon explains. "I was having lunch with a Japanese guy who said, ÔYou should do a conveyor belt sushi bar with girls in black PVC mini skirts,' which of course I never did, but it was one of those focused moments." So, having narrowly escaped Yo! PVC, Simon opened Yo! Sushi, the world's largest kaiten zushi, in Poland St. in London's West End, in 1997. With a vast conveyor belt, talking drinks' trollies, sushi robots, banging music and hip staff, Yo! was an instant success, and these days turns out 600-800 covers a day.

Yo! Below

As the gospel according to Yo! spread across the city Yo! branches started popping up in all London's swankiest spots like Selfridges and Harvey Nicholls, celebs started borrowing Yo!'s portable conveyor belts for launches and lunch parties, and media types began ordering Yo! To Go for lunch, delivered on Yo! Smart Cars and Yo! Bikes zooming around the Soho streets. And Simon watched with glee as Yo! Sushi became the cornerstone of his plans for world retail domination and a whole host of totally unrelated stuff tagged to the Yo! brand, like Yo! To Wear clothing, with Baby Yo! and Yo! You Kids ranges on sale in the sushi bars. Plans for the future include a Yotel!, a Yo! Club and a Yoganic! supermarket.

But, back to the rock that this was all built on: Simon explains the Yo! take on this 200 year tradition. "The way I see our relationship with Japan is, first of all, I don't think we're a Japanese restaurant; we're a Western restaurant that just happens to serve Japanese food," he says. "We've always tried to stick closely to the Japanese sushi tradition but, certainly, we do new Euro-sushi - vegetables, strawberry and cream etc. - although we basically try to recreate very classic, very high quality Japanese sushi."

Despite the growing demand for classic sushi, safe Western tastes have dictated that fifty per cent of food on the Yo! conveyor belt is hot - so it's equally as likely that a plate of tempura, teriyaki or a bowl of soba will scoot past you as a plate of sashimi will. This is important if Yo! is to survive and attract new customers who wouldn't normally consider eating out at a sushi bar. "People need that to be drawn in and feel safe to go in," says Simon .

This departure from the constraints of tradition has been a conscious one and Simon is keen that Yo! does not simply copy the original sushi concept. "For us, Japan is like a window - we can look into that window or put our hand through it and take something out that is from a deep, traditional culture, or something new even, but with a lot of respect and not trying to plagiarize."

But, really, there is little chance of that happening when not even the wasabi is authentic - that's imported from Korea. Real sushi chefs have been traded in for a millennium alternative, with sushi-making robots churning out up to 1200 pieces of the stuff every hour in the Yo! kitchens. Simon knows that the majority of his customers understand so little about Japan that they're unable to recognize the false experience anyway, and that doesn't matter at all. Yo! is meant to feel exotic, to feel new and vibrant, to feel the way the British expect Japan to feel - young, modern and an itsy bit wacky, but with a hint of a historical connection.

Downstairs at the Poland St. Yo! you'll find one of Simon's latest ventures, the much raved-about Yo! Below bar. Here, there's everything you'd expect from your standard izakaya - low-style seating, draft Kirin, a good menu and a late license - except that this izakaya has had the Yo! makeover. Here, the Kirin's on tap at your table, the sake's a cocktail ingredient and the staff perform karaoke while you watch manga videos, enjoy a massage or marvel at the great smoke-consuming ashtrays. It's pure J-Pop culture, hammed-up Brit style, and it's tonnes of fun.

If Simon has his way, the Yo! brand of Euro-sushi will soon be taking over the globe, and he certainly hasn't ruled out exporting sushi back to Japan, that's for sure. "A lot of people have approached me quite seriously and said if you we're to take Yo! Sushi, with all the fashion elements, and open it in Tokyo it would be highly successful," Simon says. It might sound a bit like selling fridges to the Eskimos, but he knows it'll work because the sushi at Yo! isn't quite like anywhere else. Yo! is no place for the tired salaryman; it's a noisy hangout for the trendy Pop generation who have money to spend and time to kill - which, of course, makes it absolutely perfect for Tokyo.