Maki Toki — Restaurant in Austin

Not bad. My first experience was a Wednesday night dinner and I have to say the food was pretty good, but the experience was not.

4/5 for flavor, 5/5 for presentation 3.5/5 for portions: I started out with the miso soup, of which I am a huge fan in general and a bit of a connoisseur however this Miso was all together underwhelming. It was not stale, so it had definitely been made that day, but was not fresh and had probably been sitting in a warmer since lunch. It also could have used a little more bonito stock. I had the chefs choice for the suhi roll, a fresh and delecate yet spicy roll that exploded with flavor in my mouth and reminded one of watching a summer night's fireworks show in Kyoto underneath a blossoming peach tree, with all of the visual extravagance that accompanies it. However, after all of this, I was still so very hungry, as the portions are rather small, so I ordered the calamari. Now, there are many ways to fry calamari so when I inquired as to the restaurants particular method you can imagine my surprise when my server seemed quite annoyed with me, which I noted, but was willing to overlook after such a magnificent suchi roll. As it turns out it was a standard tempura batter. When the calamari came out the only words that I can use to describe my emotions would be disappointed and confused. Disappointed because for the price, the serving was unacceptably small and confused because as a sushi restaurant calamari should be a home run and not an over cooked rubbery mess as physically challenging to eat as it was to pallet. DO NOT order the calamari.

3/5 for alcohol selection: I firmly believe if a sushi restaurant is going to serve alcohol it needs meet certain criteria: At least 3 kinds of Asian beers, 2 of which should be japanese (tsingtao-Chinese, sapporro-Japanese, kirin ichiban- technically american brewed in a japanese style, out of the west coast)-- Check! At least 7 different kinds of sake and at least 2 house sakes(a filtered and an unfiltered) as well as at least 1 plum wine: there were 6 kinds of sake, 1 unfiltered, 1 house sake, and no plum wine.

2.5/5 for customer service: when I walked in I was instantly greeted by 2 things- 1.) An initially friendly waitress and 2.) An unmistakable stare down by the owner sitting in the corner that made me inherently uncomfortable, as if I was unwelcome. The sushi chef didn't so much as make eye contact when making the sushi roll and was steadfastly holding a conversation with my waitress who was all the way down in the other end of the counter. I found this rather rude, but I recognize not everyone would feel the same way. All in all if I were to sum up the customer service in a word it would be "meh".

I would definitely want to give it another shot before I recommend it to a friend which is why I...

Used to frequent all you can eat sushi places about once a month when I lived around Toronto. I've been missing it lately, so I was pretty excited when I saw that there was an all you can eat place in Austin. However, the place turned out nothing like I had expected, and I ended up quite disappointed.

Service seemed sort of slow. We were the only four people dining there at one point, and the first rolls came about 30 minutes after ordering.

All you can eat option was really pricey: $36 per person was what we were told. Despite going there because of the all you can eat option, none of us ended up getting it. In hindsight, it would not have been worth it considering the quality.

Overall, the sushi was not that great. There were many things that didn't feel quite right, but the most striking issue was that half of the reverse maki rolls were threatening to fall apart due because they lacked enough filling inside the seaweed to keep it from crumbling. It's like they were running out of all the ingredients and were trying to stretch whatever they had left. Vegetable maki also had some something in it that couldn't be chewed apart, possibly asparagus.

There was nothing horribly wrong with the place, but it was lackluster in a few too many ways. This is probably the first sushi place I've been to where the sushi does not surpass grocery store bought sushi and instead, falls large a step below. The people who ran the place were...

Honestly one of the worst meals I’ve ever eaten.

I’m not sure the restaurant owner has any idea what “tempura” means. Or “katsu”. Or “sushi” for that matter.

I ordered a tonkatsu bento. Even the rice was awful: it was freaking minute rice. Yes, that’s right, a 22 dollar “Japanese” meal came with instant rice, and it wasn’t even shortgrained rice. Instead of katsu sauce, it included some rank pink sauce (NOT yumyum sauce, as I had initially hoped). Instead it veggie tempura, it came with three pieces of oily fried vegetables with no panko anywhere on them. The katsu itself was also foul, drenched in old oil and breaded in some stuffy, dense garbage instead of panko.

Even the California roll managed to be pointless, though perhaps that was due to not even coming out with wasabi.

And the prices? Like, I can’t cut them a break, I paid 30 dollars for lunch with a soda. The only way you’re hitting that 10-20 dollar range the google page claims is if you just order miso soup and don’t leave a tip.

Abysmal. I hate to be so negative but there was nothing redeeming about this. Not a single...