Masa Sushi Japanese Cuisine Gilbert — Restaurant in Gilbert

My mother-in-law took my wife, daughter and I here to celebrate my wife's and my birthdays. Our usual sushi place closed down after we had been going there for a great many years, so it was up to me to find a new place to try. I pulled up Urban Spoon and Masa Sushi had a rating of 91% and one $ - my kind of place. I looked at the menu and saw a large selection of sushi combinations so we headed out. When we found the place, my wife didn't want to go in because she wanted a real restaurant and not a fast food place like Yogi's Grill. We convinced her to go in and thankfully they had several tables with comfortable chairs. We barely sat down and the waitress brought out miso soup and lettuce salad with ginger dressing for each of us. The menu was a bit daunting with all the selections and combos. I usually order something without avocado since I seem to have an allergic reaction to it (sushi in Japan uses very little avocado except in Cali rolls why can't US restaurants be more authentic?). For starters we had a couple orders of shrimp and veggie tempura which was nice and light even though it was deep-fried. The dipping sauce was warmed up to keep the veggies from getting cold when you dipped them. For the meal we ordered Spicy Spicy, Red Dragon, Hot AZ, and monster rolls. My mother-in-law had a combo of Cali roll, nigiri and sashimi. Everything was fresh, delicious and a lot larger than we expected. Once we killed the sushi they brought out an orange-apple dessert with whipped cream and pocky which was beautifully arranged. The service was good and my ice tea glass never went dry. The waitresses were kept very busy and seemed a little stressed to keep up a good level of service. I can see where an especially demanding customer might be ignored somewhat because of the number of customers they are serving. This place seemed very popular but I didn't see anyone waiting and we didn't have to wait long at all for our food. All and all, I really couldn't see anything they could improve on except maybe adding another waitress. Good job Masa Sushi!!! We...

Food ★★★☆☆ Service ★★★★★ Atmosphere ★★★★☆

Service was really good! Our waitress was attentive, kind, and checked on us often. The atmosphere was fun and modern. It was very clean, and a calmer place.

Prices are really reasonable. Chirashi don was good, but there wasn't vinegar in the sushi rice; which was odd, but I still enjoyed it!

The sweet shrimp nigiri was disappointing- it had a layer of soy sauce that made it hard to taste the shrimp underneath. When we requested the sweet shrimp without the soy sauce, the flavor was very savory, like the shrimp being used wasn't actual spot prawns that make the dish sweet shrimp. The otoro nigiri tasted more like chutoro (cheaper fatty tuna), and it also had a layer of soy sauce that made it difficult to taste the expensive fish being paid for 😟 The nigiri was disappointing.

My friends ordered multiple sushi rolls, but couldn't taste the fish through the heavier seasoning. They still enjoyed their rolls though!

Overall, I don't recommend their current specials, but their rolls aren't bad. The chirashi don is odd, but yummy! We probably won't order traditional sushi here, since their cuts aren't great, but modern rolls and hot food seems to...

5 stars for service and staff. I also rated 3 stars instead of 1 because I appreciated that they comped my meal when I spoke to them, but the sushi was unfortunately the worst experience I’ve had. Masa had really good reviews so thought we’d try it out. We love sushi. The sushi came out kind of unusually quick which I thought awesome, but I don’t know that was good after all. Our sushi was so warm it was dripping and melting out of the roll. It was a really really unpleasant experience and couldn’t stomach the sushi. My son and I couldn’t get through more than a couple of pieces and left hungry. It seemed as though the fish had been sitting unrefrigerated for way too long. The salmon was heavily discolored and black/brown. It was kind of concerning whether or not there might be safety issues with eating sushi here. When I had to bring it to the waitresses attention she said it just came out of the fridge, but there is absolutely no way. Would love to come back and try again, but a few other customers have also complained about this concern and we’d feel more comfortable eating sushi elsewhere until masa perhaps...