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LF: Review of New AYCE japanese restaurant below Pacific Mall

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  • Feb 27th, 2006 12:39 pm
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May 8, 2004
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goffeebeans wrote:Went there today.. Nothing like the reviews that people posted here. Place must have took a DIVE!!

Went in at about 1:30pm. place is not even 25% filled.
Heres list of problems:
1) The menu they gave us was filthy. It was covered in dried up soy sauce, grease, rice, and what not. I didnt even want to hold that thing up. Not even was the menu dirty, even the plastic sign on the table that lists the "milk tea and the more expensive rolls (dragon and such)" was covered in soy sauce and rice as well. Few plates were dirty but thats not too bad as its quite common.

2) Waiters are useless. They dont tend to you at all. They walk around aimlessly from one end of the restaurant to the next, but never serve you. Had to wait atleast 2-4 mins everytime before they even noticed me or I would have to call them down from halfway across the place. Mind you that the place is not even 25% full. I dont see how with even so little people in the restaurant and having 3-4 waitresses how that we can have a table filled with empty plates and not have them taken away. We had to stack them all up on the side of the table and they sat there for atleast 15-20 minutes.
*The only waitress that was fine was the chubby one*

3) Ordering - We placed 3 orders in total. Every order they missed atleast 30-40% of our orders. So about 4 dishes out of 10.
There is no people in the place.. HOW!? is this possible
Almost all of our cooked food never came and quite a few of our sushi never came until we kept asking the waiter for our order. The table beside us were having the exact same problem as well.

4) Food
- Dragon rolls and any specialty rolls are an additional $1 each
- Spider roll was not available because it wasnt defrosted.
- Tiger Shrimp none available.
- Rolls were poorly made. They varied in size and awkward shapes.
- The spicy salmon rolls had a funky taste to it.
- beef skewers had an odd taste to it as well
- Curry fish balls were cold. (First order never came, 2nd order came cold)
- Pork cutlet in ramen was barely lukewarm.
- spicy salmon rolls and crispy spicy salmon rolls are identical.

Basically the whole menu consists of salmom rolls, california rolls, avocado rolls or mango rolls. Love the selection for all you can eat..
Everything else on the menu is a crap shoot. Either its not available and they dont tell you and just ignore it or they completely miss your order.

For a place nearby, Id suggest akiyama.
Better atmosphere, better food, better service, and costs less. Practically next door.
Well I was at SAKE last week and I thought they were very good. I think we've had only 1 or 2 missed items out of about 30. We went on a Wednesday night so it wasn't really that busy but the restaunt was about 75% full. I'm not sure how much they charge now but when I went it was 12.99, and for that you can't expect the more "pricier" items like the dragon rolls. I also went to Ikura 2 days ago which was way worse in my opinion. They only offered 3 types of sashimi, one was Salmon, and I didn't even bother remembering the other two because I didn't even considered them as Sashimi. While SAKE offered Salmon, Mackeral, Tai, Squid and some others. SAKE is very good, and for 12.99, you can't expect a lot.
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Feb 20, 2005
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Homer88 wrote:Well I was at SAKE last week and I thought they were very good. I think we've had only 1 or 2 missed items out of about 30. We went on a Wednesday night so it wasn't really that busy but the restaunt was about 75% full. I'm not sure how much they charge now but when I went it was 12.99, and for that you can't expect the more "pricier" items like the dragon rolls. I also went to Ikura 2 days ago which was way worse in my opinion. They only offered 3 types of sashimi, one was Salmon, and I didn't even bother remembering the other two because I didn't even considered them as Sashimi. While SAKE offered Salmon, Mackeral, Tai, Squid and some others. SAKE is very good, and for 12.99, you can't expect a lot.
Note that my experience is for lunch.

Yes, I agree with you that For $12.99, you cannot expect a lot for selection wise, but this does not address all the other issues. So for $12.99 I should also not expect clean tables (or atleast a simple wipedown), decent service or hot food.
I supposed that experiences vary, as my gf's brother mentioned that the place was good, but our experience was quite the opposite. By looking at other peoples reviews it seems that they vary widely in consistency, so you basically taking a crap shoot everytime you go. Why not go somewhere that you can expect a regular consistency on food and service.

Like I mentioned Akiyama is much better http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/show ... ge=2&pp=23
Better service, better food, which includes the more expensive dragon rolls, better atmosphere and COSTS LESS
The review by trueno92 is pretty much on par with my experience there.
I went to akiyama at 2:30pm (last call 3pm), so even at these "off hours" I received a much better experience there than at sake.
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Feb 26, 2005
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Ajax
Full house there tonight. Had to wait to get a table. Lots of York BBS girls.
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Nov 21, 2004
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Went there this past thursday around 6pm. Disappointing since they missed half of our orders (we saw them give our orders to the tables on both sides of us). Sure you can say for $12.99 you can't go wrong, but how hard is it to bring food to a pre-determined table number!?

Never going back.
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Apr 1, 2005
685 posts
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Toronto
I lost their business card :( anyone have their phone number? want to book a table for tomorrow.. thanks
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Feb 20, 2005
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goffeebeans wrote:Went there today.. Nothing like the reviews that people posted here. Place must have took a DIVE!!

Went in at about 1:30pm. place is not even 25% filled.
Heres list of problems:
1) The menu they gave us was filthy. It was covered in dried up soy sauce, grease, rice, and what not. I didnt even want to hold that thing up. Not even was the menu dirty, even the plastic sign on the table that lists the "milk tea and the more expensive rolls (dragon and such)" was covered in soy sauce and rice as well. Few plates were dirty but thats not too bad as its quite common.

2) Waiters are useless. They dont tend to you at all. They walk around aimlessly from one end of the restaurant to the next, but never serve you. Had to wait atleast 2-4 mins everytime before they even noticed me or I would have to call them down from halfway across the place. Mind you that the place is not even 25% full. I dont see how with even so little people in the restaurant and having 3-4 waitresses how that we can have a table filled with empty plates and not have them taken away. We had to stack them all up on the side of the table and they sat there for atleast 15-20 minutes.
*The only waitress that was fine was the chubby one*

3) Ordering - We placed 3 orders in total. Every order they missed atleast 30-40% of our orders. So about 4 dishes out of 10.
There is no people in the place.. HOW!? is this possible
Almost all of our cooked food never came and quite a few of our sushi never came until we kept asking the waiter for our order. The table beside us were having the exact same problem as well.

4) Food
- Dragon rolls and any specialty rolls are an additional $1 each
- Spider roll was not available because it wasnt defrosted.
- Tiger Shrimp none available.
- Rolls were poorly made. They varied in size and awkward shapes.
- The spicy salmon rolls had a funky taste to it.
- beef skewers had an odd taste to it as well
- Curry fish balls were cold. (First order never came, 2nd order came cold)
- Pork cutlet in ramen was barely lukewarm.
- spicy salmon rolls and crispy spicy salmon rolls are identical.

Basically the whole menu consists of salmom rolls, california rolls, avocado rolls or mango rolls. Love the selection for all you can eat..
Everything else on the menu is a crap shoot. Either its not available and they dont tell you and just ignore it or they completely miss your order.

For a place nearby, Id suggest akiyama.
Better atmosphere, better food, better service, and costs less. Practically next door.

it's $12.99~~ shesssssssh...you probably have to pay more than that if you were to order a regular sashimi combo at a regular restaurant where you get like 12 pieces of thin little raw fish. While at Sake, they offer 6 kinds of sashimi and it's AYCE~ plus they have sesame ice cream which a lot of AYCE dont' have~ You can't really expect gourment food and high quality service at an AYCE but I definitely think SAKE is great for its value~
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Jan 3, 2006
407 posts
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Toronto
so wait.. are people allowed to smoke in there? i think thats what one of the pics suggested.. or do i need to recheck my glasses?

can anyone confirm this?
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Jan 11, 2004
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jrm904 wrote:so wait.. are people allowed to smoke in there? i think thats what one of the pics suggested.. or do i need to recheck my glasses?

can anyone confirm this?
you can in the smoke room
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Jan 3, 2006
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Toronto
gilboman wrote:you can in the smoke room
thanks for the quick reply.. i have another question though.. does the smoke seep to the non-smoking area? cuz i can't stand the smell of smoke..
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Feb 20, 2005
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crabby1997 wrote:it's $12.99~~ shesssssssh...you probably have to pay more than that if you were to order a regular sashimi combo at a regular restaurant where you get like 12 pieces of thin little raw fish. While at Sake, they offer 6 kinds of sashimi and it's AYCE~ plus they have sesame ice cream which a lot of AYCE dont' have~ You can't really expect gourment food and high quality service at an AYCE but I definitely think SAKE is great for its value~
OMG :lol: are people really this ignorant. Second person to try to justify the $12.99 price... read the whole post BEFORE you reply. I dont even really comment much on the food its mostly that they arent fully cooked/defrosted and which are UNAVAILABLE. Who cares if they list more things if they dont have any in stock. Your $12.99 point can justify only 25% of what i mentioned. Theres the other 75% that you decide to completly ignore. ie, lack of basic service, missing 40% of the orders and cleanliness. In addition its nots the cheapest of the AYCE places nearby for lunch.
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Feb 20, 2005
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goffeebeans wrote:OMG :lol: are people really this ignorant. Second person to try to justify the $12.99 price... read the whole post BEFORE you reply. I dont even really comment much on the food its mostly that they arent fully cooked/defrosted and which are UNAVAILABLE. Who cares if they list more things if they dont have any in stock. Your $12.99 point can justify only 25% of what i mentioned. Theres the other 75% that you decide to completly ignore. ie, lack of basic service, missing 40% of the orders and cleanliness. In addition its nots the cheapest of the AYCE places nearby for lunch.

When I was saying the $12.99 arguement, I was referring to DINNER prices~(sry if i didn't point that out, 'cause i never go to AYCE for lunches) you have to admit that sake offers the cheapest dinner AYCE price with all the sashimi~

anyhow, i pass by sake today, they raise their price to $13.99 for dinner and wouldn't take reservations for after 4pm.... > :(
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Nov 15, 2004
371 posts
After reading some of the bad encounters I've decided to give it another go. My first visit was last summer..& everything was a-ok...

Lunch is now $12.99 if I recall correctly..when we arrived around noon..there were only 2 waitresses..& one waitress was busy seating a table of 12+ (don't remember how many there were..) we had 2 wait a good 2 - 3 minutes 2 finally make that one waitress realize we were waiting 2 be seated .(apparently that big party was asking a ton of questions) After being seated, I notice the other waitress was busy getting tea ready..it turned out that they just sat most of the other tables too..and were busy trying 2 get every1 settle...

after finally flagging one waitress down 2 place our order..we had 2 wait a while 2 receive our sushi/sashimi order..the Sake Salad came first..didn't have 2 wait long 4 that..(I would hope not!) our skewers, tempura and fried dumplings came next...then after about maybe 10 - 15 minutes..our raw fish arrived (I guess considering every1 else basically ordered at the same time..come 2 expect the wait)

Eventually, 2 more waitresses & 2 more sushi guys showed up 2 work..(total 4 waitresses & 4 sushi guys)

The menus were a little sticky (not sticky sticky though)..but really..I think all the other AYCE place..their menus are just about the same..imo..the empty dishes did pile up a bit..but not out of the ordinary I guess..considering only 2 waitresses in the beginning..

what can u say 4 ayce sashimi!!! :lol:
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Jul 6, 2005
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Can anyone post their phone number and the dinner price for Friday?
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Dec 12, 2005
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I went through the whole thread, but i can't find the phone number or current prices.
Can someone tell me the number or quote the dinner prices (price including sashimi)?
Thanks!

edit: the exact address would be nice too.. lol
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Apr 1, 2005
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icy_krystalz wrote:I went through the whole thread, but i can't find the phone number or current prices.
Can someone tell me the number or quote the dinner prices (price including sashimi)?
Thanks!

edit: the exact address would be nice too.. lol
416 832 7253
4300 steeles ave. E. unit P88


dinner price is $13.99 now I think +2 on weekend, not sure about lunch
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Dec 12, 2005
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silvermist99 wrote:416 832 7253
4300 steeles ave. E. unit P88


dinner price is $13.99 now I think +2 on weekend, not sure about lunch
thanks, silvermist99!

What's ur opinion of this place recently?
Is the quality still as good?
On the menu, I don't see tuna.. do they offer that anyway?
Newbie
Jul 6, 2005
52 posts
After going last Friday night, I am sure that I won't go back again.

Even though the price is low, but with the selection of food and the quality, it is not worth it.

First, they don't take reservation after 6:30, which is fine. We took a number and wait in line, no problem there.

Got a table around 20 mins, then looked at the menu, a lot of the items were not available anymore. Submitted the first order, and already, not everything came. Orderd 2 soft shell crab roll but never came. Tempura is not even hot, worst than Chinese buffet resturant.

Second order, put down 2 soft shell crab roll again, and circle it. Still only 1 order arrived.

Will never go back to there again. I rather pay 5 bucks more.

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