Sansotei Ramen — Restaurant in Toronto

Appearance: 3.5/5⭐️ I ordered Tonkotsu, Mazemen plus a bottle of peach sake. Main focus of my review is on the dish I ate - Mazemen. Taking a first look at the portion size, it was quite small, the ingredients were thrown together in the bowl. But the vibrant colours playing together really brought the dish to life. I was quite excited to try this new vegetarian ramen dish.

Smell: 3.5/5⭐️ My ramen unfortunately did not have any distinct or memorable smell. The Only thing that I could truly smell was the corn by itself. I was excited for the ingredients to shine through individually but this was a disappointment.

Taste: 1/5⭐️ This tasted like canned corn with cold instant noodles drenched in extra hot spice, no other notes or flavours came through in this dish.

Texture: 2/5⭐️ I truly did not find the textures of this dish to work together that well. Aubergine(eggplant) was too over cooked, soggy, and mushy, it was strange in colour, did not look appetizing. Corn was basic - a bit firm a bit mushy straight out of the can. Slice of seaweed was soggy as the green onions were placed straight on top of it. Missed opportunity to place it on the side for extra texture variety. Noodles were clumped up together like they were sitting out for a while. Heat level of the dish was THROUGH the roof. I was left disappointed.

Temperature: 3.5/5⭐️ I’m not sure what happened in the kitchen, and why our food was being prepared so long in an empty restaurant setting, but when food was finally served it’s not what we expected. My noodles were already cold and hard to separate, eggplant was lukewarm, the rest of the ingredients were cold.

Flavour: 1/5⭐️ Not a single ingredient in this dish was truly flavourful. No umami, no distinct flavours, nothing was shining through. Only thing you will most likely taste is the extreme heat that covers all the other aspects of ingredients.

Price: 1/5⭐️ $60 + tax + tip will come down to 80$. Extremely pricy for the quality-quantity of food you get at this particular location , as well as the quality of customer service overall is not worth it.

Customer Service: 1/5⭐️ I was visiting with my partner for dinner, the restaurant was empty, with the exception of three other customers that later came in after us. Service was extremely slow, inefficient, and careless from the start to finish. Staff stood around the restaurant with their arms crossed majority of the time. Our food was served late - customers who arrived after us received their food first. When my partner asked for a glass of water, our server walked by us 6 times, other customers got served, then she returned to her standing position with her arms crossed, I had to call her again and ask for water myself, only then was it served immediately. I will not be returning to this particular location of Sansotei Ramen on 650 Yonge. Next time I will not hesitate to go out of my way to visit my original Sansotei location at 179 Dundas St - more consistent quality. Very pleasant attentive staff that go...

**3.5

My experience here was good but not great 😔. I will only comment on the food as we got it to go which may have affected the quality.

Mazeman ($14): I was excited to see this on the menu as the other ramen places I’ve been to typically only serve a tomato-based soup. This dish is dry i.e. does not come with broth which I found to be a bit of a downfall. It affected the texture of the noodles and it became somewhat congealed when I sat down to eat. The noodles were good but I didn’t feel it was enough to compensate broth that might’ve improved the flavour and consistency. On a more positive note, the eggplant was beautifully seasoned: a perfect mix of garlic and salt. The sweet corn was a nice relief, a good palate refresher and dish brightener. The added bits of saffron to top were a nice touch.

The tan tan noodles ($16) were received well! The broth was milky with a higher viscosity than your typical ramen broth. It had great depth of flavour.

The chicken wings ($8) weren’t the best. They were cooked well, however the seasonings didn’t shine through. It wasn’t a great pairing with the ramen and lessened the associated bliss with the tan tan.

Even though I got take out, I found the female waitress was kind and congenial.

It’s a small place; it’s minimalist but with pops of artistic flair (wood carvings and peach watercolours provide needed pops of colour). It’s location on the street is discreet; it’s a hole in the wall type vibe which are usually some of the best...

We went to Sansotei on Yonge in Toronto on a weekend, around early dinner time. It wasn’t packed, so we got a seat right away. We also got the menu and water soon after.

We got the Vegetarian mazeman ($14) which is a dry dish where you mix all the ingredients. This is perfect for someone that doesn’t want soup on a hot day, and it’s very flavourful. We also got the Tonkotsu ($15) and the Tonkotsu black ($16.50). The soup has a lot of depth, their chasiu are always a good potion and grilled perfectly. We asked for thick noodles because we like the chewiness, but it depends on your preference. Sansotei has been our favourite ramen chain restaurant for years.

Some things to improve on are having more options for non-soup dishes. One of us wasn’t a fan of soups during summer since it’s so hot out, so having other dry noodle dishes would be nice. As well, we wanted to charge our phone, we even brought the plug, but they didn’t let us use an outlet. The waiter went to ask their manager and they shut us down. They said there was nowhere we could charge it, but there is definitely an outlet somewhere in the store that could be used temporarily while we ate. We were very disappointed that they were not able to accommodate since the phone was the only one working during the Rogers outage. For that, we were not as pleased with...