Makimono Sushi Bar Restaurant — Restaurant in Toronto

I have been to a vast array of All You Can Eat Sushi restaurants, but I am by no means an expert or authority on what makes for "good sushi". I only know what I find to be good or acceptable. I have also only eaten here on the All You Can Eat menu and cannot comment on the a-la-carte menu.

With that said, this restaurant is close to home so we decided to try it after our main restaurant closed a year ago. We now come to Makimono at least once a month.

The restaurant is in a good location near the airport. The exterior and interior are very well decorated. The boothes are well designed and all of the tables are well sized. The chairs for the tables are not the most comfortable but the booth benches are nice.

The space is well lit and overall the atmosphere is welcoming and slightly premium feeling. The space is clean, tidy, and well organized. The sushi chefs are on display and it can be fun to watch them work.

In my opinion the pricing on Fridays and Saturdays is unnecessary, but the difference between lunch and dinner makes sense, as there is a reduced menu.

The tempura dishes are light and crispy, the dishes like sesame chicken and teriyaki beef are very tasty and well portioned. Things like the crab cheese wontons and Salmons roses are well made and tasty. Overall, we have never ordered anything that we haven't liked.

Speaking of ordering, the restaurant uses iPads and a custom application for ordering food. This was new to us, as I suppose we had always gone to places that had paper cards to fill out. This iPad system is very easy to use and allows you to read about and see what you are ordering.

I feel like it's a common experience to have a dish brought to your table that you didn't order, and refusing it is something you need to have experience with recognizing the food to do. The waiters and waitresses in our experience have always been understanding and concede in these situations. There doesn't seem to be a language barrier either, like we have seen at many sushi restaurants in Hamilton for example, which also aids in the customer service experience.

The sushi itself is tight and well prepared. Sashimi is well prepared. We don't usually get handrolls so I cannot comment on them. If you order a lot of rolls, they will usually come out on a large plate with interesting layouts and garnishes. In my opinion the presentation is extremely good for the price you pay. Those who expect Southern California sushi house presentation where you pay $20 a roll have incredibly unrealistic expectations.

Overall I believe that this restaurant produces good quality sushi and Asian dishes at a competitive price point in a...

Edit: we visited again for AYCE and the pacing problems from the previous visit were addressed. Service was quick and the food was enjoyable. The fish tasted fresh and had good texture, and the portions were generous with the sashimi. The tempura was crispy and seemingly good quality, and the dim sum dumplings were fine; same as anywhere else. We even got the cute robot for the non-sushi items. Recommended.

Originall 2024 review: We went for the AYCE sushi, and the experience was OK but not great. The iPad AYCE implementation wasn't really working well and cost almost $40/person. For less money, we could have ordered a sushi boat at another place, enjoyed it more, and had leftovers for the next day. If you come here, I recommend focussing on the sashimi.

In more detail: when the iPad AYCE system works well, it is a very fluid experience: you order a few items, they arrive promptly, you eat, and repeat until full. When we went, there was a huge amount of latency: we had to wait about 15 mins sitting around doing nothing between clicking to submit the order and receiving food. This was tedious and resulted in us making larger individual orders in which we had to estimate the amount of food, and which eventually burned us on on the final round, where rolls showed up with prodigious amounts of dense rice that we had to eat to avoid being penalized for wasting food.

Price was higher and service much slower than another place we've patronized up on Hwy. 7. The manager was hustling the whole time, so that wasn't the bottleneck, but they seemed to be understaffed and/or not making optimal use of their robot.

As far as the food goes: the sashimi and sushi toppings were generally very good (we particularly liked the unagi nigiri and the salmon sashimi). We didn't care for the rice: it was dense, flavourless, coarse and a bit "dry" somehow. It's hard to describe as a non-expert, but it was notably unusual and detracted from the experience. Sat like ballast in your stomach. The special rolls with tempura, avocado and so forth tasted good, but they were oversized and had too much rice in them: finishing turned into a chore. It was nice to have dim sum options: these were OK but nothing special. We were intending to finish with some of the other choices (tempura, coconut shrimp, steamed custard buns, etc.), but the roll round put paid to that, so no idea how good that stuff is.

My wife was going to order some extra dessert (!), but the iPad shut down for some reason and she decided...

NEGATIVE -10.

Firstly, we were greeted and served by a young gentlemen named Brian-THANK YOU. Everything went downhill after his shift ended/ or went on his lunch break. The female who served us was RUDE. not attentive, was annoyed when we asked for napkins and forks because she had taken it upon herself to take our cutlery when we were not finished. She seemed to have been so annoyed , that she returned to us with plastic cutlery/ utensils. We asked for water, she got more upset. We asked about of black pepper steak order that we waited over 30 minutes for, she came back to tell us there is” none “? Afterwards, she kept insisting for us to be totally done ordering our food. We kept saying no we are not done, she then decided to point out it was a “90 minute” per table situation. Which is reasonable, but I’m this case she had us sitting around for over 30 minutes waiting for one of our orders ..

The time came to pick up the cheque, she was miserable and rude. We asked for her name, which we believe she gave us the wrong name. Because once we asked for her name, she crumpled up the receipt that she had initially brought us .., and decided to print another one. she said her name was Likki, or Nikki .. not too sure. We did comment to her that we felt rushed and uncomfortable with her service , she kept insisting that she is “polite” “good service” We heard her out .. but she didn’t hear us out. We were not being rude. We just wanted her to understand where we are coming from due to our experience. She just laughed and kept saying “I don’t care, maybe I don’t feel well today *and laughed” her sarcasm, her service, her attitude , totally unprofessional. Due to this, I can say my dining experience today was absolutely beyond awful! It’s Unfortunate really, because this establishments food and environment is good. Just not worth going to after this...