Matsuda Japanese Cuisine - Scarborough

Matsuda Japanese Cuisine (Scarborough) is located at 5651 Steeles Avenue East, near McCowan Road, at Middlefield. It has another location at Don Mills South of York Mills which I have yet to review, although we went there long ago when it was different. This one has a nice modern interior which is a little noisy because of the open echoic roof/ceiling. There are plenty of booths available. Tea is left at table in carafe. Unfortunately disposable chopsticks are used, which is why I bring my own. Soy sauce was rather salty, and when I asked no low sodium soy sauce was available. Soy sauce was somewhat less salty when wasabi was added. AYCD pop is $2.50.

Rolls are given in three or four pieces, rather than six which is an improvement as it leads to less wastage.  Green salad had Thousand Islands dressing and it was "meh" at that, but things picked up right after that. Potato egg salad was unique and very good. Miso soup was wonderful with a smokey savory flavor and nice aftertaste. Shrimp tempura was a bit oily but the sauce was excellent and very enjoyable. Matsuda Golden Shrimp was excellent combination of flavor and breading. Steak teriyaki is, as usual, worth the entire price of the meal in its tender garlicky gorgeousness, but it was a bit cold (possibly my fault) so I ordered seconds to make sure I enjoyed it. Beef skewers were a bit overdone but still tasty; chicken skewers were moister and I liked the spicing. Yam and pumpkin tempuras were excellent and not too oily. Japanese hash brown was good but had no sauce, so tempura dipping sauce worked well in its absence. Grilled white fish fillet was very nice with a subtle flavor. Chilled tofu had excellent flavor, very good sauce and large green onion or shallot pieces. Avocado cucumber roll was very good. Sunshine roll was indeed bright with a happy flavor and I enjoyed the mustard-based sauce. Salmon nigiri was very good. Spicy salmon sushi was excellent and well-spiced. Pork belly skewers very tasty with curryish spicing.   Teppanyaki vegetables either were very subtle or needed more spicing, hard to determine but still quite good. Spicy beef ramen delicious and happily not too hot. Spring rolls have a hot mustard sauce which was nice.  Vegetable fried rice was thankfully excellent, as I was getting very full.

However, sirloin rolls had a strange flavor that I didn't like. Gyoza tasted a bit stale as if it was too long in the freezer; the sauce was okay. Tofu in house sauce was strangely crunchy, cooked to mummification and I did not like it at all.

For dessert mango and vanilla ice creams were supremely rich and creamy. Tiramisu (in a shot glass) was delicious and not overdone. Blueberry mousse was my favorite and had real berries in it. Taro mousse was the similarly good but a different flavor and quite unique. Strawberry cream was also very yummy. Fruit jelly mousse had a nice lychee flavor. Mango yogurt was rather odd.

Beware the 2:30 cutoff for the 3:00 lunch end. Also there is 10% service charge. Lunch was $19.99. Not all the items were up to the standard of this price, but everything else was very good to excellent. It was a very enjoyable lunch and mostly worth the expense.

Rating: 7.5-8/10