Sushi Tomato

Moose Reviews: Sushi Tomato

Being an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant with a lower-than-average price tag, Sushi Tomato @ Metro Square (Steeles & Warden) offered a decent variety of soft drinks and Japanese foods to choose from.

The servers were friendly, but they seem so busy all the time that it was hard to get their attention to order something. They also seem to have trouble getting the orders right - dishes would appear even though we have never ordered those particular items, some dishes we ordered never came, or they would give us something we ordered that already came. In the end, the ebi sushi (shrimp atop a ball of rice) never came, and the udon noodles only came after asking the server twice.

The food itself wasn't spectacular. The deep-fried capelin was mouth-burning hot being freshly fried and was the best hot dish they served. The tempura shrimps were not bad either. But everything else has gone wrong. The tempura veggies were not tempuras at all, being simply dipped into a regular batter before they were fried, and came out so greasy that we had exhausted the extra stack of 4-6 napkins in an attempt to blot out the oil. So were the grilled eggplants and enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon - way too greasy to stomach. The miso soup was overly salty. The teriyaki beef was disproportionately sized - one order was more than enough to share among the 6 of us.

Don't expect too much from the sushi bar either. The size of the piece of ika (squid) was not big enough to cover the tall rice ball underneath. The maki rolls were thick with rice but not enough fillings. The beef sashimi (thin slices of raw beef) came frozen. They didn't bother to thaw the butterfish sashimi either. The red-snapper sashmi was sliced too thin and lost its texture. The only thing they got right was the sake (salmon) sashimi, which they did not seem to want to supply enough of.

Price is right, but the quality of both food and service could use some improvements. Would I go again? Probably not. Even if we have to resort to all-you-can-eat sushi, there are much better ones in Markham for just a buck or two more.