not your average review
Yonge & Bloor
Masa Sushi
Masa Sushi is located just east of Yonge Street, on Charles Street. It’s two short blocks south of Yonge and Bloor. The restaurant shares the same building as the Comfort Inn. You can choose between ordering from the menu or the flat rate All You Can Eat. There’s free delivery for orders over $25 between 5pm and 10pm. Pick up orders are 10% off.
15 Charles Street East
416.920.3388 | website
M-S 11am-11pm.
» order online now!
/ 10
/ 10
416.920.3388 | website
M-S 11am-11pm.
» order online now!
// rating
/ 10 / 10Review Date: Nov. 3, 2009
We met up on a Tuesday at 6pm to try out Masa, a sushi restaurant that heavily promotes their All You Can Eat lunch. We opted for the menu ordering, however.
It was a bit of a surprise that they offered both regular menu or all you can eat option. Usually it’s one or the other. The place is pretty nice a lot bigger than it appears to be from the front. If I remember correctly, it’s only a few years old. The previous tenants of was a…wait for it…a sushi restaurant.
Hehe…True, from the outside it doesn’t look like anything special but once you get inside it’s quite large – and the atmosphere is great. Very nice. Too bad the outside of the restaurant doesn’t reflect that. We were seated right away and service was prompt the entire night.
It wasn’t too busy and I always wondered how well a sushi place could really do attached to a hotel. I can understand a standard North American type restaurant but a sushi restaurant seems a bit odd. The menu was pretty large with lots of photos. The waitress left us to look over the menu to figure out what to order. She came back to take our food and drink order at once rather than the normal drinks first. I asked for green tea and you ordered a coke?
Indeed…went with Coke. Sooo, you suggested going all rolls this time, and I was on board with that. We picked 5 different rolls along with the spicy salmon sushi pizza (of course!). Our roll order was: Spicy Tuna Roll (tuna, green onions, tempura butter), Rainbow Roll (crab, cucumber, avocado, tobiko, tuna, salmon and white fish), Red Dragon (deep fried shrimp, cucumber, avocado, flying fish egg with map), Fresh Mango Salmon Roll (mango, salmon, cucumber, crab, mayo and tobiko with fresh mango sauce), Toronto Roll (eel, avocado, salmon skin, tobiko with sweet sauce)
I was tempted to go with another party boat but figured why not go back to the rolls. For all the times we’ve eaten sushi, I can never remember the magic number of dishes we should order. Is it 5? 4? You said you were hungry so 5 it is! The first few dishes came out pretty quick with the rest coming out shortly afterward.
First out, I believe, were the Spicy Tuna and Toronto rolls. I thought the Spicy Tuna were decent but nothing special. For the Toronto rolls, I’ll say the same. They were fresh but I noticed one of the last pieces of the Toronto roll was mostly rice.
Nice catch! I agree, it was all fine but nothing really out of the ordinary or special about them. It’s looking more and more like a “just another sushi restaurant”. The sushi pizza and the Mango Salmon Roll came out. Tasted pretty good as well and the Sushi pizza had my kind of spiciness level. A welcome change considering the last few places have been a bit too spicy for me.
Yes, the sushi pizza was more like the typical ‘Yonge Street’ sushi pizza style. It was decent, but nothing special. I found the Mango Salmon rolls quite good, actually. I was surprised. The last time I had a mango roll I wasn’t a fan, but Masa pulls off a nice one. The other roll I really enjoyed was the Red Dragon.
The rest of the rolls were decent, pretty standard fare. I don’t know about you but it seems that after all these reviews, I think we might be raising the bar in determining what is “good sushi”. I noticed that some of the rolls were kind of big so it made it challenging to eat them in one bite.
Agreed…If you were one of our first reviews you may have gotten away with a better grade than you would have today. As for the Rainbow Roll, glad you mentioned the size, the middle couple of pieces are crazy big. I had one near the beginning of the meal and pulled it off and then attempted another right at the end. It wasn’t pretty, as I’m sure you saw. I nearly gagged (true). Not sure what was with that, but they were far too big. That kind of killed my sushi experience at Masa, to be honest. I suppose I shouldn’t have attempted it but, really, they should be making them a size that you can eat properly.
I noticed you were struggling with that piece. It was a scary moment and I thought that I’d have to pull the out heimlich maneuver! Ok maybe not that scary… I agree, I think it ruins the experience when they make huge size pieces so you spend more time trying to chew than actually taste and enjoy the sushi. Oh well, in the end, I think Masa is a decent place. Very nice decor and a lot more space than you would think from the outside. For me, it falls under the “yet another sushi restaurant” category. Not bad but not great. 7/10 for me. I did notice on the way out they that have some kind of hibachi or teppanyaki kind of service as well which are always fun so maybe worth checking out.
My review of Masa went downhill as the meal progressed, but overall it’s not bad. The restaurant atmosphere and service were great. Can’t complain there. This maki was decent – some rolls better than others, as I already mentioned. My near death experience, however, not so great. I’ll join you at 7/10 with a warning to stay away from the Rainbow Roll.
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© 2009 Sushi Toronto. 
Wow you guys really gave this place a 7 huh! I’m curious what the benchmark for comparison? i went there with a friend twice, once for AYCE and once for ala carte.
For AYCE: the rolls were 95% rice. 95% because each roll was twice the normal size, with as much as rice stuffed in as possible. so while that percentage might not be accurate it surely felt like a 95%, the taste scored a grand total of 5%, I would of course need to give another 5% for the rice! I guess they dont want you to eat as much, which is understandable, so we ordered a bunch of stuff, couldnt finish it all, so decided to leave the rice on the ebi(shrimp) rolls and eat the shrimp. opened up 6 pieces and the total amount of shrimp inside was the same as normally found in a pice of roll (that was divided in 8 pieces).
As for the Ala Carte: I guess they forgot we were’nt there for AYCE. the same story. sad ending.
Will never go there agin.
Cheers!