Sushi Legend — Restaurant in Toronto

Don't typically leave reviews but it was just that bad that I just had to. Came in to the restaurant at 8:45ish, after the first order didn't feel like ordering a second wave and at a all you can eat place that's not a good sign.

Tldr: DO NOT RECOMMEND. everything was heavy and oily except the sashimi was ok. As well as dessert. for the price there's better options. Seems like everything was just heavy and oily so you'd drink more soda (which is free). Their quality has jumped off a cliff compared to a couple years ago and used to eat sushi legend quite often.

EDIT: def had some sort of food poisoning, been back and forth on the toilet and felt like yacking.

Starting with the food, we were already hungry so didn't take that much photos had a assortment of sushi, rolls, sashimi, some tempura and some grilled things. To start at the sushi rice were mushy and under-cook( if you look at the torched you can see it still has the rice core more on that later) feel like rice that's been left out for a good while. Other rolls were ok so there wasn't any other photos. But then the spicy crab roll came and it tasted disgusting, if you've ever left mayonnaise out you know what I'm talking about where it becomes kinda clear and oily which is exactly what the spicy crab looked like and tasted dry ,sticky, oily and super heavy. The torched sushi series (Yes i mean whole series) had a joke of a ratio for fish to rice like maybe 5-10 grams of fish to like 50-70 grams of the god awful rice. Mind you I know it's a pressed sushi but that also means the amount of rice in there is nice and packed. A nicer ratio would have been just half the given rice. It was straight up rice and mayonnaise is what it tasted like.

All of the fried or grilled items were kinda soggy and oily again and tasted like they had been left out for a WHILE. Tempura and takoyaki had a hint of sourness which shouldn't be there and super soggy and oily ( seemed to be like this for the whole meal) nothing was crispy. Grilled shrimp and grilled fish seemed meh just a little too salty and fish wasn't super fresh tasting a bit more like frozen but it's kinda expected for a ayce. Moving on, sashimi not gonna lie was ok, salmon tasted fresh enough for a ayce but if you know a little bit of bit of which kind of slices come from where, all the slices we got was basically edge pieces of the salmon ( lots of triangular and "trailing" pieces). The sweet shrimp was ok just if you look at one of the sashimi pics it still had its shell on it :/

Lastly, dessert is the only semi redeeming part about the meal. coffee jelly/pudding is decently made with instant coffee but tastes relatively good hence it doesn't really have a pic we inhaled it as it came basically. The taro coconut sago was also good ,light and a little sweet from the coconut base. Creme brulee was on the lower quality side in my opinion compared to other places flavors were all there but had kind of a scrambled egg taste probably the custard part got over cooked as you can see in the pictures it's not the silky smooth texture you'd usually get.

Service was what you'd expect, their main "services" is bringing you food and drinks and you order off a iPad or your phone when they closing. We are till it was almost closing time so I get the rush to close and go home but like just don't do it infront of the customers you know. I've done food service jobs so I get the rush but yea. It is what it is.

Overall, definitely do not recommend this place for its price even a non-ayce sushi place you'd get almost the same amount of food at 20x the quality. We spent 90 bucks for 2 people. Might edit the next day if we get...

Really wanted to give this place a good review but a two-star is already painfully teeth-clenching.

Let's start with the pros: parking lot is big so finding a space is not an issue. Restaurant is huge, well-lit, good spacing between tables. Wait staff is attentive, friendly, and service is FAST. Ipad ordering and prices are typical for AYCE sushi. Reservations are organized: made one over the phone for party of four and they send you a reminder prior to your dinner (at which point you confirm your table by replying "1").

Sadly, that's not the main priority for us when we look for a good sushi place though. It was really confusing for our party because despite the food coming out fast and presentable (for AYCE), the quality of food was AWFUL:

1. Despite the variety of sashimi on the plate, everything tasted the same...how is that possible?!
2. was excited to try different kinds of sushi and while the look of it was like "oh, yay!" when it came to the table, the feeling was "oh....uhm, nay...." upon trying it
3. hand rolls were soggy :(... the whole idea of filling yourself with a hand roll is to experience the crispiness of the seaweed....what's happening guys :(
4. the rice in the sushi rolls and hand rolls was mushy. furthermore, it's questionable whether the rice was real Japanese rice (or just Jasmine rice). It did not even have a hint of that sweetness you get from good Japanese rice in sushi.....that's a HUGE no no for Japanese restaurants.
5. garlic beef tenderloin had no garlic flavour (or any seasoning for that matter) - huh?!?
6. Torched sushi.....more like burnt sushi - eek!
7. they forgot 1/4 of our orders which we were SO thankful for as we were just trying to finish the poor quality of food on the table and get out of there FAST
8. one party member ordered a vanilla ice-cream that came out like vanilla pudding (she took two bites and was sick later on that evening....probably the culprit)
9. imitation crab soup tasted like hot salt water
10. another party member ordered fried banana for dessert and was disappointed when the banana arrived drenched in chocolate sauce

It's a problem for a sushi restaurant when you walk away from this experience thinking, "well at least the chocolate mousse was ok".....

The wait staff are hard-working and friendly but the chefs have obviously checked out as they lack any care/quality in their food.

Eight thumbs down. Definitely will...

date visited Wed Feb 08, 2023 Chartwell Shopping Centre, 175 Commander Blvd unit 2, Scarborough, ON M1S 3M7

Overall Experience : 3.5/5

Comments : We have been dining in at Sushi Legend since 2016. I just haven’t gotten around to the review until now LOL

Service : 3/5 I find the service to be fair, not amazing or great. As of our most recent visit, we didn’t receive a tablet to order our items from the Lunch AYCE, we were informed to scan a QR code and had to the use the link to order our items. Apparently now, the tablets are reserved for larger groups 3 or more? We only went for lunch. Tho they do allow for dinner AYCE ordering at Lunch. Price wise, their website does not have the current pricing. We paid about $27 per head for Lunch menu AYCE. Tho near the end of our meal, our server seemed to be rushing us.

Food : 3/5 For what we did order, the items were good, no complaints. EXCEPT they did miss items a total of 3 items ordered if I recall were missed. Items we ordered : Tempura Shrimp, Tempura veggies, Chicken wings (2 per stick), miso soup, salmon teriyaki, rock shrimp, salmon w/cream cheese, green dragon roll, sexy summer roll, grilled eggplant, salmon sushi, squid sushi, red snapper sushi, bitter melon w/egg, eel fried rice. The ones that were missed : an order of salmon w/cream cheese, eel roll (6pce), sexy summer roll. Oh the shrimp tempura seems like not well strained? It was a big on the soggy side and not as crispy. I do wish they had more selection for the tempura veggies. Also not as many squid/calamari options on Lunch AYCE. For those that are managing Gout, there are enough options available to navigate possible gout triggers. I am able to manage around beef, pork, some of the other fish options.

Drinks : n/a we had tea and made a request for warm water, since I’m diabetic, no soft drinks.

Value for Money Spent : 4/5 As with the current economy. We find that going to a AYCE option is the best deal so to speak vs a-la-carte ordering. We feel that we still got our money’s worth for the visit. In some places, our $65 CAD paid might only get us 3 dishes? Maybe 4?

Worth repeat visit : 4/5 Of course!! We have been making return...