Matsuda Japanese Cuisine - Don Mills Location — Restaurant in Toronto

I've been coming here since before the pandemic and things have definitely changed up. Before, I'd probably have given Matsuda 5 stars - that's how much I enjoyed the unique AYCE sushi and teppanyaki experience. But there are definitely some things that have changed for the worse. First off, I don't think I would ever come here for just sushi AYCE. Since the teppanyaki option comes with AYCE sushi, we did try a small selection of the sushi menu while the chef was getting ready. I didn't love anything we ordered - the torched salmon, unagi sushi and green dragon roll all had crazy amounts of rice. Like 25% more rice than I'm used to in a bite. It simply did not taste good. The sashimi was decent for AYCE but not as fresh as I remember.

The teppanyaki part was still a treat and I have fewer complaints about that. As always the chef is professional and skilled and will cook the food properly. They have changed up the menu a bit, since I don't remember tofu or short ribs ever being part of the teppanyaki set. I didn't particularly enjoy either of the additions. But my favorites (as always), were the chicken, sirloin steak, shrimp and salmon. They do try to fill you up on larger quantities of the (in my opinion) cheaper foods, such as the white fish and fried rice. I did end up ordering seconds of my favorites but was genuinely too full to enjoy it from the amount of rice in my sushi earlier.

One thing I'll note that was better this time - the service was actually quite prompt and accurate. A lot of reviews say the service isn't good but I found it very pleasant when considering the number of people that were dining the day I went.

Finally, price - it's now $44 a person on weekdays and even more for weekends. That's crazy! I definitely cannot justify that based on the amount I can eat. I could pay under $50 and get a better a la carte experience elsewhere. Do not come to Matsuda expecting to eat your money's worth - you're paying for the experience, which I admit is worth a bit in itself. There is a 10% cash discount so it ended up being $51 pp including the automatic service charge and tax. The discount is very nice so I'd recommend bringing cash. I'd also recommend making a reservation if you come near a holiday or weekend, as it was a quoted 45 min wait for AYCE sushi tables and I doubt any walk-ins were available for teppanyaki when we arrived.

Edit: Also want to mention, please tip your teppanyaki chef if you enjoyed...

We pre-booked a table for four for teppanyaki + sushi buffet on a Thursday. There were still lots of room in the parking space, and they were very fast at getting us thru to our table. The table was very roomy, you share a table with another group but there's enough room in the u shape table to accompany us both and keep some room between us.

In terms of food and service is where this place falls off. After tips and taxes, this place costed us 50cad per person, and with this price I felt the menu options was very limited both for sushi and teppanyaki. There were no scallops, no sweet shrimp for sashimi or sushi, and no torched sushi (u can pay more to have these on the weekend supposedly).

And on top of that, the food we ate from the very limited menu wasn't that great, some details:

the pork rib was very tough and hard to chew the meat off the bone (I nearly broke my wooden chop stick trying to eat this thing),

the steak was very dry,

the teppanyaki shrimp was very small and tasted not fresh like they were frozen prawns (v little sweetness and a waxy texture),

the sashimi had some sand still in it (they weren't washed thoroughly enough),

the sushi tasted on the same quality as box take out sushi from a shopping mall.

Also, the service was v infrequent, you'd have to wait a while to get anyone to attend your orders and some food we ordered didn't arrive. It looked like they were understaffed.

The dessert was also disappointing, the ice cream was just your regular no brand ice cream - green tea ice cream with very little tea flavor in it. For this price point I think it is reasonable to serve branded ice cream especially since all the other food wasn't that good.

Overall, for the price we paid which was 50 cad per person (includes tax+tip), I was very disappointed considering the high rating of this store on Google maps.

I think the only reason to come here is if you're ok to overpay for a meal where you can enjoy the experience of getting to see a chef cook the meats in front of you. It's a nice experience once just for that but I wouldn't go again as the food they're cooking is sadly not that tasty and...

This is the 2nd time I've visited this place and am sadden to have to write a bad review. We booked a reservation for 4 people for 6:30pm eager to enjoy our all you can eat buffet. Traditionally when you go to a Japanese restaurant they serve tea (@ no extra cost) and when we requested ours were told there was a $1 charge per cup with unlimited refills. This may not seem like a thing but pre-covid the tea was included in the all you can eat set price which by the way has increased to $36.99 per person for dinner time (Monday to Thursday). The food presentation has gone down and the food barely touches the table before the server runs off not allowing an opportunity to ask for anything else needed. Also we never got half the things we ordered off the menu.... After an hour of being there and placing 2 orders a waiter comes to us to let us know that there is a 90 minute limit per table and that we had only 10 minutes left. I let the waiter know that we were not made aware of the 90 minute per table limit when we made the reservation nor when we walked in to be seated also we had arrived at 6:30pm and at that moment it was only 7:40pm so I didn't understand how he was deducting 10 minutes off our 90 minutes which we were never made aware of to begin with...... You know it sucks that prices have increased so much post quarantine and its okay to set a time limit per table that is understandable but what is NOT ACCEPTABLE IS THE SNEAKY WAY IT'S DONE. People making reservations should be told when they arrive or when making the reservation about the time limit/changes not after they have placed an order, gotten half their food and are committed. To top it off you no longer have the option of how much tip is deserved. When given the bill they automatically include a 20% tip for themselves. The purpose of a tip is to give what you feel is deserved depending on the level of service, quality of food, overall experience and etc. It's bad enough we feel like we don't have a right to say no to the covid19 vaccine without it affecting our lives now we can't even choose the amount we feel is...