YH Seafood Clubhouse to bring dim sum, fresh seafood to Restaurant Row

A new eatery coming to Restaurant Row will offer seafood so fresh that it swims right in front of you — literally.

YH Seafood Clubhouse is set to open in February 2020 at 8081 Turkey Lake Road. The restaurant will be taking over the space that once housed O’Charley’s at the Phillips Crossing shopping center. YH Seafood Clubhouse is a new concept from John Zhao and Tommy Tang, the owners of the Yummy House restaurant chain in Tampa, which is known for its Chinese cuisine. 

“We (serve) Cantonese cuisine and Hong Kong cuisine,” Zhao said. “Everything is cooked to order. Our veggies are chopped daily, and our seafood comes in, pretty much, daily.”

Like the original Yummy House restaurants, YH Seafood Clubhouse also will specialize in the same cuisine, but a key aspect of the restaurant will be the freshness of its seafood. Guests will be able to select fresh, live seafood from more than a dozen different tanks that will be in the restaurant. After making a selection, the item will be cooked in-house using whatever method of preparation a guest chooses.

“We will sell all kinds of live seafood all depending on the seasons,” Zhao said. “We have seafood coming in from California and New York three to four times a week on a plane. We’re going to (have) lobsters, crabs, oysters (and) all kinds of live fish. We’re going to have 16 tanks in the dining room, and the customer can pick anything they like in the tanks. … We’ll bring it out and display it to the customers to make sure it’s the one they want. Then, we’ll cook it fresh in the back at the kitchen.”

Additionally, the restaurant also will offer a variety of dim sum — such as handmade dumplings crafted daily. The dim sum will be available every day, but only during lunch hours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Zhao said.

“We’re going to serve Hong Kong- and Cantonese-style dim sum,” Zhao said. “We currently have four restaurants (that serve) dim sum, and once the restaurant opens in Orlando, it will be one of the biggest dim sum restaurants in Florida. ... (And) it will be one of the biggest Chinese restaurants in Florida. It can fit 300 people.”

Zhao said he wanted to open YH Seafood Club on Restaurant Row because he saw a need in the area for eatery offering Hong Kong and Cantonese-style Chinese food. He added that although there are plenty of Chinese restaurants in the area, most of them only offer New York City-style Chinese food. 

“There are two or three Cantonese restaurants (in Orlando), but it’s not compared to what we try to serve in Tampa — it’s very different,” Zhao said. “Every time you see a Chinese restaurant in Florida, it’s New York Chinese (food). Yummy House is a little different than the New York Chinese. You can taste the difference. The menu is different, the items are different, the tastes are different and the ingredients are different.”