I don’t know about you, but lobster at a buffet gets my attention fast.
This Virginia spot takes all-you-can-eat in several directions without making dinner feel like homework. Seafood gets plenty of room, while sushi, hibachi, pho, and other hot dishes keep your first plate from becoming the only plan.
The restaurant is also a newer arrival, opening in Alexandria in early 2026 after taking over a former seafood-chain space. The old setup now has a completely different personality built around variety.
Lobster may pull you in, but the rest of the room makes staying focused surprisingly difficult.
Personally, I’d take one lap before touching a plate.
There is too much going on here to waste round one on a bad strategy.
The All-You-Can-Eat Spread Has More Than One Game Plan
Forget choosing between sushi night and hibachi night. Yami Buffet would rather put both decisions in the same room.
The Alexandria restaurant is an all-you-can-eat buffet centered on seafood, sushi, and hibachi, with pho, barbecue, dim sum, noodle options, hot dishes, fruit, and desserts adding more stops around the room.
That range makes the buffet broader than a single seafood bar with a few supporting trays.
You can move through the meal in stages instead of trying to build one heroic plate. Start with sushi, save a corner for a dumpling, then head toward hibachi once you know what deserves a second round.
Yami currently operates seven days a week. Current hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Friday and Saturday. Specific dishes and promotions can change, so checking the latest update is useful if one item is driving the trip.
The buffet rewards a little patience. Walk first, plate second. Your appetite will appreciate the reconnaissance.
Lobster Gives Dinner And Weekends The Biggest Talking Point
Here is the detail that can turn an ordinary buffet stop into a calendar decision: lobster.
Yami offers lobster with qualifying dinner and weekend service. The lobster deal is limited rather than endless, with restaurant advertising specifying one lobster per person and directing diners to ask their server for it.
That means you should not expect a pile of whole lobsters sitting unattended on the regular buffet line.
The restaurant’s lunch and dinner offerings are priced differently, and the lobster offer is tied to higher-priced dinner and weekend service. If lobster is the main reason you are going, checking the latest terms before making a long drive is a smart move.
You will find Yami Buffet at 555 S Van Dorn St, Alexandria, VA 22304, in Alexandria’s West End.
Once the lobster arrives, the buffet still keeps moving around you. Sushi, hot dishes, hibachi, and desserts are waiting for whatever plate space survives.
One lobster may get top billing, but the rest of the room has no intention of playing background scenery.
Sushi Gives Seafood Fans A Completely Different Route
Lobster may be the headline act, but sushi has its own corner of the stage.
Fresh sushi is one of Yami’s main buffet features, sharing the room with seafood, hibachi, and other Asian dishes. It gives you another seafood-focused stop before you even begin deciding what deserves space from the hot stations.
The assortment can vary, so the better plan is to see what is being served that day instead of arriving committed to one particular roll or piece. A changing sushi spread also gives repeat visits a chance to send your plate in a different direction.
That makes pacing useful. A plate overloaded with fried food leaves less room to explore the sushi side, while a lighter first pass gives you time to look around before heading toward the grill.
Sushi also changes the rhythm of the meal. You can move from chilled pieces to something hot from hibachi and then circle back toward seafood without every plate tasting like the one before it.
At a buffet this broad, variety is not only about quantity. Sometimes the best move is making the next plate taste nothing like the first.
The Hibachi Station Lets You Take Control Of The Next Plate
When the buffet line starts making too many decisions for you, the hibachi station hands some control back.
Hibachi is one of Yami’s regular buffet stations, giving you a cooked-to-order stop within the larger all-you-can-eat setup.
You choose from the available ingredients and have them cooked on the grill, creating a plate that can be different from whatever is already waiting on the hot bar.
That is especially useful after a round of sushi or seafood. Instead of repeating the same flavors, you can move toward grilled ingredients and build a combination around what looks best at the station that day.
The hibachi station sits within a larger mix that also includes sushi, seafood, pho, dim sum, and hot dishes, so it gives the meal another direction without requiring a separate order.
There is also a practical buffet lesson here: do not fill every inch of your first plate before you have seen the grill. Hibachi requires a little appetite in reserve.
Call it edible budgeting. Spend all your plate space too early, and the grill will make you wish you had saved something.
Pho And The Noodle Bar Bring A Warmer Detour
A bowl of broth can be a surprisingly good reset button in the middle of a buffet.
Pho is part of Yami’s all-you-can-eat selection, and the restaurant also features a build-your-own noodle bar. That gives you a warmer, more customizable detour from sushi, lobster, and fried seafood.
The setup makes sense in a buffet built around contrasting choices. You can put together a noodle bowl, add the available accompaniments, and slow the meal down for a moment before deciding what deserves another trip.
Pho also broadens the restaurant beyond the standard formula of Chinese hot trays plus sushi. It gives the buffet another recognizable Asian comfort-food option and creates a completely different experience from standing at the hibachi grill.
Hot Chinese-style dishes and other cooked favorites fill out the surrounding stations, though those selections can rotate. The smartest approach is the same one that works elsewhere at Yami: take smaller portions first, then return to whatever earned an encore.
A buffet can become a race if you let it. A hot bowl of noodles is a pretty good excuse to stop competing.
Dim Sum And Small Bites Reward A Little Curiosity
Just when your plate starts looking organized, dim sum arrives to ruin the neat plan.
Dim sum is part of Yami’s buffet mix alongside the noodle bar, hibachi station, seafood bar, and sushi. Dumplings and other small bites give you another way to sample the spread without committing much plate space at once.
Small portions are useful at a buffet because they let you explore without surrendering half the plate. One dumpling can sit beside sushi or a piece of seafood without turning the meal into a commitment to one station.
The exact selection may shift, so there is no reason to arrive expecting one particular dumpling or bun. See what is available, take what looks appealing, and leave room for something you did not know you wanted five minutes earlier.
That unpredictability is part of the fun when the buffet covers this much ground. A plate can move from seafood to noodles to dumplings without needing to make culinary sense to anyone except you.
Nobody is grading the combination. If lobster and dim sum end up neighbors, let them work it out.
A Former Red Lobster Got A Very Different Second Act
The building has served seafood before, but the current chapter looks nothing like the last one.
Red Lobster closed its longtime Alexandria restaurant at 555 S Van Dorn Street in August 2024.
Later that year, Good Charm, LLC applied to the City of Alexandria to take over the property as Yami Buffet, describing the proposed business as an Asian and Japanese restaurant and planning a major interior renovation.
The city approved the administrative special use permit on December 27, 2024. Plans called for expanding the roughly 7,900-square-foot restaurant and increasing capacity beyond the former Red Lobster layout.
Yami eventually held a soft opening on December 16, 2025, followed by an official ribbon-cutting and grand opening on January 13, 2026.
Today, the old chain restaurant houses an all-you-can-eat operation built around seafood, sushi, hibachi, barbecue, hot dishes, desserts, and other rotating choices. The address stayed familiar while the dining experience changed completely.
That history gives the lobster angle a funny little twist. The building lost a Red Lobster and eventually gained a buffet that can still put lobster on your table.
For a second act, that is a pretty memorable way to keep seafood in the story.