Masa Japanese Restaurant Vancouver — Restaurant in Vancouver

It’s a real shame that a good establishment can be let down so badly by one staff member. We’ve eaten/ordered from Masa a number of times and would consider ourselves somewhat of regulars at the place. But unfortunately the young female server who works there is just incapable of any form of manners or empathy towards anyone else but herself. We’ve had instances in the past where she’s been quite rude when ordering. But the last time we ordered from there was nothing short of a joke. We rang in to order a lunch for two so we could pick up and take to the park. After confirming the full order she confirmed the total amount due, took our name and number and we were told that the wait would be 30 minutes for pick up. We felt this was a little excessive (Considering it was sushi) and would push our plans a little, but went ahead anyways as we genuinely enjoy the food at Masa. After waiting the 30 minutes and heading over to the restaurant to pick up the order we were greeted by the same women who took the order. After stating I was there for the pick up she very abruptly told me “there’s no orders for pick up”. I clarified that we spoke 30 minutes ago and reiterated the conversation. She claimed that the call got cut off at the end so she didn’t put the order through. I was shocked and clarified that we did place the order, she even repeated it back over the phone, took my name and number and told us the wait time. At this point she very rudely denied this series of events by saying that no order was confirmed and said it wasn’t her problem. I was very confused. I then ask how long it would take to replace the order to be made. She responded with “I don’t know”. At this point we were starting to get frustrated. There was clearly some form a miscommunication when placing the order. Regardless of whose fault it was , just acknowledging what had happened and trying to accommodate a solution would have been sufficient (albeit still annoying). Without any hesitation she continued on with what she was doing and didn’t seem at all bothered about what had happened. I’d put this down to maybe a bad day, very busy day, or something else along those lines. But having dealt with this person time and time again, it’s simply just her persona. You only have to read through the various other reviews to understand that she is a common denominator in most people’s bad experiences at Masa. How she is still employed is beyond me. In conclusion, food is pretty good at masa and it’s a nice place but this server is so negative and unaccommodating it simply over shadows the rest of...

Masa Japanese Restaurant is located on the corner of Hemlock and West Broadway on the 2nd floor, overlooking the small mini mall below. I fondly remember having our first Japanese restaurant date at a now defunct Japanese restaurant in the same location many moons ago.

There’s a good variety of dishes on the menu so we decided to go with the Teriyaki Course lunch special ($12.95) and added an order of Gomaae ($3.50), 3-in-1 Agedashi Tofu ($5.95), and Assorted Sashimi ($19.95). One of the weird things is that they brought out the Teriyaki Course lunch special piecemeal… and not all at the same time. The lunch special comes with miso soup, sunomono, prawn skewer, and 3 side dishes consisting of pickled radish and seaweed. The miso soup and 3 side dishes were the first to arrive at the table and then, over time, additional parts of the meal showed up like the sunomono and then the prawn skewer. The actual entrée was the very last thing to arrive much later on. I would have preferred if the lunch course was brought out all together (or at least close to the same time).

The Agedashi Tofu came to the table in between the lunch course and consisted of 3 different preparations: Original Deep Fried Tofu with traditional sauce, Diavolo with hot sauce, and Hawaiian with fruit. The Diavolo (I thought they misspelled this and meant “diablo” which is Spanish for “devil” but apparently “diavolo” is Italian for the same word) seemed to be topped with a Korean-style hot sauce and the Hawaiian was topped with small mango pieces. Overall, I thought the deep-fried tofu needed a bit of work because the exterior of the tofu was too chewy instead of being lightly crisp.

The Spinach Gomaae with sesame sauce was the next item to arrive and was pretty good.

The Assorted Sashimi was the next dish to arrive to the table and consisted of 4pc salmon, 4pc tuna, 2pc wild salmon, 2pc hokkigai, 2pc tako, and 2pc of either tai or madai (not really sure). Aside from the octopus, which was a bit too chewy, the rest of the sashimi seemed pretty good.

The chicken teriyaki finally arrived at the table and was served on top of a bed of shredded cabbage and carrots with a scoop of rice. While the chicken lacked a crispy skin, the chicken itself wasn’t too bad. The sweet teriyaki sauce was slathered over the chicken pieces and went well with the plain white rice.

Overall, most of the food dishes were okay but nothing...

Initial thought was that it was a nice restaurant, clean inside, and the manager (or owner) lady had us seated very quickly. That's about where the good part ends. Short summary, they messed up our orders, food tasted bland, and charged us for something that never came, then questioned us like we were thieves when we told them it never came.

In detail, after we were seated, a younger girl came to take our order moments later. We ordered a couple of rolls, a few aburi pieces, and a bowl of ramen. She had written everything down on a notepad.

One of the two rolls and the aburi pieces came first. They had messed up the aburi and given us an incorrect amount of what we ordered. We caught the attention of a guy server, told him what we had ordered, and he brought it back into the kitchen. Not even 30 seconds later, the girl server comes back, drops the food back on our table, and leaves without saying a word. We figured that the value of the pieces was close enough so we just ate it anyways.

About 10 minutes into the meal, we realized that we didn't have any tea or water, which is usually the first thing Japanese restaurants serve you with when you sit down. We had to ask for that too. The ramen came out after about another 15 minutes. He initially put the wrong bowl on our table but that was easily corrected after I told him. We had finished the ramen and the other roll was still nowhere in sight. We tried to catch the attention of a server but nobody came around for the next 10 minutes, so we decided to just go up and pay for everything. When we got the bill, we looked at it and they had charged us for everything we had originally ordered, including the roll that never came. We brought it up with them that one of the rolls never came, and the guy kept questioning us and asking "didn't it come before?" After checking with his manager several times, the manager was nice enough to tell him to just waive it.

Overall, food was bland compared to some of the other restaurants we've been to. Pricing and atmosphere is good, but service was lacking, from our...