Matsuno Sushi Fusion — Restaurant in Dollard-des-Ormeaux

So it pains me to have to review this restaurant as I try to only review restaurants with a 4 plus stars (in my opinion of course). So why I decided to review is that it’s now my 2nd time eating there and the experience has been consistent - food below average, atmosphere beautiful, staff beautiful. So why the review? At $38.00 plus tax and tip per person for the all you can eat I felt that one needs to properly evaluate the value proposition.

Note: To the owners, I hope you take this in the most constructive manner as it’s not meant to put your thriving business down at all, however, you may wish to improve though perhaps not, as regardless of the day and time the restaurant is full and lines of people waiting - so maybe I am too picky given that I am a foodie with a background in the industry?

So to compare this restaurant. 1- Selection: When I compare it to key competition such as Kanda, Sawadika, and La Perle - the selection is very low. Pricing can be up to only $4.00 less from Matsuno, but it does not come close to the amazing and numerous quality tasting dishes such as shrimp toast, shrimp in lobster bisque, poached fish in black bean sauce, etc. The fact is this restaurant gives you the bare minimum of selection and I would encourage anyone to go to La Perle (for Chinese) and see for yourself. 2- Quality & freshness: I/we found issues such as the calamari was not even like bubble gum, octopus was passable, and the sushi rice had an overly goey texture and taste that was unappealing. This is NOT a place for sushi, if you want good sushi go to Mikado! Or go to all you can eat sushi places (can’t find a good one yet). The crispy red bean paste sesame balls were actually fantastic as was the won ton soup. Gyoza dumplings were tasty, the Katsu chicken was nice but sadly they place the sauce on the chicken thus making some pieces saturated with sauce and other without - sauce in the side please! The sushi seaweed paper was the worst I have ever experienced. It was barely chewable and often and had to spit it out like a piece of fat from a bad steak. I don’t know why this would be and it also wasn’t tasty. 3- Overall value proposition: Frankly, it’s hard to say this because I genuinely enjoyed my time there and the atmosphere, their cool way of ordering food and how quickly the food would come to the table and the kind and attentive staff were all great. I am sure ownership will be quite defensive and state that they are sad to here my experience was not up to “my” standards, that I should maybe come again in the future, that the proof is they are busy non stop and their business is thriving. But trust me, go to La Perle or other places and taste for yourself - this is not the best place to go for all you can eat Asian at these prices. *Note, La Perle doe NOT offer any Japanese food, however I would look at it like this, if you want to eat the best quality food then go to the place that offers it and don’t compromise with an all in one place and sacrifice on both. Have Japanese at Mikado’s and Chinese at La Perle or which ever places you prefer. For those who love this place I suggest to try other places to compare - sorry if I have offended you. Maybe this is just me, but after going with two different groups one year apart with the same outcome and with both groups (12 foodies) all coming to the same evaluation… either we are all food snobs or we actually know what good food is as we’re experienced in this field and are just calling it as it is. Now at the end of the day is it worth the price? Not in my opinion. Bottom line the food is not worth the money for the most part as some dishes are good to ok. And the rest passable and the sushi - forget about it. The environment and staff...

I have been to Matsuno for all-you-can-eat maybe 4 times before Covid and I quite enjoyed it. Since then, I have been getting take out every other month and it's decent. Last Wednesday we wanted to try the all-you-can-eat again. It was quite a drastic price change, now at 35$ before taxes for a Wednesday. But we thought that if the food was still as good, would be worth it. Host showed us to our table and a waiter came up and asked if we wanted anything to drink which we kindly declined. He took the drink menu away and that was the last time we saw him until the end of the night. We had to pour our own water and navigate through the menu by ourself. He didn't care to ask if we have been there before or if we needed any help with ordering. We placed our orders and received our sushi rolls within 2 minutes. Before the kimchi or tempura. So the rolls are ready made. Would explain why they were dry and falling apart. Tempura was very oily. Salmon sashimi was not good quality. Salmon teriyaki and the beef and chicken skewers were decent. Finished the meal with some mango ice-cream but there was chocolate in it because they didn't clean their scoop properly. And finally the waiter shows up again to ask us if it's 1 bill and we waited another 30minutes for him to come back to pay. He then dares to ask us "how about the tip? Would you like me to enter it for you?" . I was annoyed and said "no, I can do that". I am trying to understand why i should tip him. There was no service whatsoever. All the work was done by a tablet and busboys bringing food and clearing the table. To not make a scene, still left him 15% in the hope that he will share it with the busboys. Overall, food was ok but not great 3/5. Service from waiter was 0/5, busboy deserve 4/5. Atmosphere was alright 4/5. For $93 without drinks and such service, I would rather go...

Worst service experience - charged the full amount for a service that never took place. As usual, I placed an order with Matsuno Sushi Fusion via Uber Eats and chose the pick-up option. After receiving confirmation that the order was ready, I went to the restaurant and found that the doors were closed with a message stating that they were closed due to weather conditions. I tried to reach the restaurant by phone, but no one answered. I immediately contacted Uber Eats to cancel the order and was told that the order was closed. A few days later, I found that my credit card had still been charged. I checked the Uber Eats application and found that the order had been completed. I contacted Uber Eats again, but they refused to refund me because orders of 48 hours or more are automatically closed. I went to the restaurant, explained the situation and asked for a refund or for my order to be honored. The restaurant manager acknowledged that they were closed that day, but after going back and forth with the owner, he refused to honor the order or refund it. In the end, I was billed for a service that was never performed... My arguments as a reliable customer over the years (I showed him my Uber Eats order history) had no effect...

So that was the last time I ordered there.

BTW, after all the above, I opened a dispute via the credit card institution and...