Sushi Masa Premium — Restaurant in Tampa

If you are wondering how long it takes a restaurant to go from good to mediocre in this case was 2 months.

Visited this restaurant 5 times as it was a new option in Tampa with an interesting concept. First time I visited my experience was chaotic and slow but in all fairness they seemed short staff and had just open for the first time and had a full house.

Consistently their service is worsening with passing day along with their food quality which seems like their team is starting to burnout.

I decided to visit them for a romantic lunch with my wife this week and they were only servicing on the left half of the restaurant… where there was 2 tables with drunk ladies who couldn’t stop drinking nor screaming and being disorderly. I asked the server if we could change tables and he said “no”. Slow service with loud and drunk people by our side spilling stuff and screaming about how people can understand or just don’t know how to have fun.

The waitress wasn’t happy about our request to move and was sure to provide the WORST service he could. We got no refills to our drinks, plates never arrived and when we asked if they where coming he simply replied with “if you had ordered them they would have”

We ordered: TomJum soup Avocado Salad Fried Calamari Salmon Nigiri sushi Out of control sushi roll Volcano Roll Tempura cheese cake Strawberry ice cream

We wanted this in that order and ended up getting cold stiff fried calamari right before the soup, soup being the LAST PLATE they brought (even dessert made it there before the soup) We had to ask about the calamari 3 times and the out of control sushi roll was delivered even after asking and ordering another the server claimed he had delivered everything we ordered and brought us the check for our “convenience”.

We left and the table was still being loud and problematic specially because the waitress and management went to their table and apologized for the buzz killers over the next table which they clearly didn’t like and then focused a lot of attention on our table making comments. We were so discreet just for them to go tell the whole restaurant we were uncomfortable. I told them about my concern and that I would leave a Google review based on my experience to which they replied “thank you but we don’t need your business, have you seen the amount of people that come here everyday? A Google review isn’t going to hurt us” (Google reviews aren’t meant to hurt but for them to address their issues and potentially improve)

Their Volcano Roll is delicious and tempura cheese cake is worth each and every calorie.

Their restaurant thematic and decoration is beautiful!

Saki with green apple or Passion Fruit are delicious!

Belle their bartender is fantastic service and makes a killer Passion Fruit Manhattan!

I truthfully hope they positively read this and address the issues… or else this business won’t be popular for long…

I really liked the place but one bad experience after another isn’t just cutting it.

Plenty of parking specially disabled parking which was great.

3/5 times a made reservations over the phone and when I walked in they didn’t have anything but welcome walk in so keep that in mind specially in the weekends.

Pictures from the first visit which we sat at the bar last visit was a booth table in a corner which would have been perfect for a lunch date not for everything else that happened.

I waited 9 days to post my review as they said they were going to reach out and they never did in regard to...

Second time coming here. We went the week it opened and the overall experience was 5 stars...this time not so much.

We had a few issues during this visit, the major one being the wait times between items while the table near us had a much faster service. We ordered two pieces of the black cod and it took 13 mins for us to receive them.

We ran into another issue when we ordered 60 pieces of sashimi. We waited a while and then the waitress mentioned that the order got denied and that we could only order 40 pieces, but the other 20 would be placed after. When that sashimi "presentation" came, it was a mess. They had placed ice inside a wooden box (what looked to me like a storage box since it was missing the lid) and the ice had melted and water was seeping out of the container and all over the table. The waitress didn't look phased by this until we asked for some napkins so that we could clean up the water mess. The gentlemen that came by with them saw the importance of the mess and took it upon himself to clean it up promptly so I thanked him for that.

We also ordered five rolls, but only received four. We mentioned it to the waitress but she said the best she could do was to put in another order, so we decided to just cut our losses with that and not get another roll, since others at the table had already had some dessert.

Overall the experience was a bit disappointing. Although the food did taste great, the service lacked quite a bit. We had empty plates sitting on our table for long periods of time while other tables had them picked up pretty regularly. We also went a few items before the waitress even gave us plates, since we had to ask for them.

If we decide to visit this place again, I hope the next time makes up for the poor experience we had this time, since we do enjoy the location...

We tried Sushi Masa and overall the experience was good. The staff was friendly and the place is clean. One warning be careful with the tables. We almost spilled our drinks a couple times since the texture of the table stops the drinks from sliding around at all when you go to move them.

First and foremost as the name of the place suggests they do seem to focus on sushi over anything else. This would be our one negative for the all you can eat option. If you do not like Sushi, I would recommend sticking with the a la carte menu unless you focus on appetizers and fried rice.

They do not offer the hibachi dishes on the all you can eat which is disappointing since the hibachi we tried was a lot better than the teriyaki dishes which were disappointing. They offer some dishes like teriyaki chicken, but it is just thin strips of possibly boiled chicken in a teriyaki sauce served on onions with no rice or anything. They do offer some other fried rice dishes also so you have to order multiple items to try and even come close to the hibachi options. The problem with this is the food comes out as it gets made which is good so everything is hot, but when you order multiple things it just comes out at random. At one point we had just rice since it came out after we had already finished the chicken teriyaki.

We also found it a bit challenging to keep track of what is coming out since a couple things we thought we ordered never came out.

I think without the hibachi options being part of the all you can eat in some way it is a place we may visit occasionally rather than more often. With other places in the surrounding area like Fowler Ave offering the hibachi options with their all you can eat for the same price, this may lead to Sushi Masa being a backup...