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Home › Winnipeg › Restaurants › Japanese › Masa
Masa
This understatedly elegant room has a short wall of traditional tatami seating, a few tables along the window and a small sushi bar. It’s in a heavily concentrated South Winnipeg strip mall with half a dozen competing dining options a few steps away. Yet the steady flow of traffic through the door pays tribute to the skillful way the chefs execute the varied menu of classic sushi, sashimi, tempura, teriyaki and sukiyaki. Lunch Mon-Sat 11:30 am-2 pm, dinner Sun-Thu 5 pm-9:30 pm, Fri-Sat 5 pm-10 pm. Entrées: $7-$18. WA, LP. Cards: IA, MC, V.
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10-2077 Pembina Hwy, Winnipeg
204-261-3131
Wheelchair accessible
Editorial Review
Reviewed in the Aug/Sept '05 issue of Ciao! magazine
The first Japanese restaurant to hit the suburbs, Masa has been on the scene for a while now. Steady traffic through the door attests to its ability to stay current in the face of a recent onslaught of sushi competition in the south Winnipeg area (we count five sushi restaurants nearby).
There is a stark simplicity to its decor, focusing attention on the knife-wielding talent behind the sushi counter. The small room has five tatami tables, a few seats at the sushi bar and regular seating. Service is knowlegeable but can be rushed on busy nights.
Japanese cuisine emphasizes two things: quality and contrast. Fresh ingredients, precision knives and beautiful serving dishes provide the quality, which is evident at Masa. The playfully sophisticated interplay of textures—gelatinous raw fish contrasted with grainy, starchiness of rice in a maki roll— offers the contrast.
The Japan-trained sushi chefs, led by owner David Kong, do most of the creative rolls that sophisticated diners have come to expect. However, at Masa the contrast is occasionally missing. Presumably to keep the price down, the spider roll has an extra layer of rice in place of additonal soft-shelled crab and it lacks crunch. Unagi has a thinner piece of eel atop the rice than downtown places, although it is still very good. This quantity/price compromise will certainly appeal to the large student population in the area.
Tempura rolls successfully transcend this issue. The bakudan spicy tuna roll, pizza roll and crunchy shrimp roll all make good use of the textural contrast. The salmon pizza roll is especially modern in that the raw fish sits atop a tempura rice cake, just like a mini-pizza.
Compromise is not an issue with the appetizers, either. In fact this is where Masa really shines; many of the choices here are exceptional. Kika misonaise is a succulent baked oyster with a sauce made of miso, mustard and mayo. It will have you slurping from the half shell. Tuna goma ae takes the traditional boiled spinach appetizer to brave new heights, with the addition of diced avocado and raw, red tuna.
Sashimi always depends on what’s fresh, so ask the chefs. The o-toro (red fatty tuna) one night was exceptionally good, with a butter-like consistency in which the highly flavoured fish almost melts in your mouth. Saba (marinated mackerel) was also excellent, with an almost smoky intensity.
Reservations recommended.
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