Masa

I made a reservation for 9 people on OpenTable on Saturday morning for 6:30 that evening and received a phone call around noon from the restaurant to confirm. (OpenTable is fantastic and I highly recommend using it.)
My seven friends all showed up on time with my boyfriend and I showing up fashionably late by about 10 minutes. Oops. (It was my birthday dinner so I get a free pass, right?) I gave my name to the hostess and was led with my crew in tow through an incredibly busy restaurant to the back left corner where it’s sectioned off and very secluded for small parties. I’m so thankful I was able to get that reservation because I can’t imagine what a pain the wait would’ve been.
I don’t remember the name of our waitress because one of my friends paid for mine and my boyfriend’s dinners and I don’t have the receipt to check. She was sweet, but a little on the forgetful side when it came to us ordering additional drinks. The food was really yummy and that’s something I’m glad to say because I wasn’t a fan of Masa since visiting its prior location for my cousin’s birthday lunch and being pretty underwhelmed by, what I remember as, their lobster roll. Thankfully, they stepped up. I ordered the T.G.I.F., a very indulgent roll with tuna, shrimp, cream cheese, avocado, and topped with tempura fish. Essentially some of my favorite things all wrapped up in seaweed and rice, mmm. My s/​o ordered the Lobster roll. Massive and delicious. The Japanese must frown upon how crazy our sushi is over here, but it is so darn good (albeit rather fattening).
Unfortunately, the service was slow and I can safely assume it was due to how busy the restaurant was that night. It’s disappointing to have to even mention due to the longstanding reputation Masa holds in Tallahassee as well as being in business more than long enough to be understaffed and underprepared for a Saturday night. Despite this, I will more than likely return, but at a calmer time.

Lovely dinner for my brother’s birthday. Something for everyone. Had seared tuna salads and Thai curry and a sampling of sashimi offerings, and shared. Plenty of food for three and some to bring home for snacks the next day. Service was excellent for early Saturday evening with an almost full house. Will definitely be going again!

I’ve been here 3 times and really have never been disappointed. The service is great, place is clean, and the menu brings in the perfect combo of sushi and asian food. The Red Dragon roll is my favorite. Dumplings are good and so is the tuna tartar !

great quality fish that you actually enjoy nigiri (without rice) most of the servers are great. unless you go earlier in the day. one place in town that actually serves uni. they have a little bit of everything starting with assortment of salads to soups to Thai curries and Japanese traditional entrees.

Very good. Nice atmosphere. Reasonably priced. Pot sticker and spring roll appetizers were excellent. Fried rice just ok. Mongolian beef and crispy mango beef main course were really good. Would recommend!

Lunchtime Pad Thai was delicious! Hot green tea made the cold weather chill disappear. I havent had a bad meal here yet. Yum!

This new Masa is huge! It took over the location of what was previously On the Boarder so there is a ton of space, which makes it good for group dinners. Most of the other Japanese restaurants are small and not too good for big groups so for birthdays, celebrations, group gatherings ect Masa is definitely the place to go. They also have a great outdoor seating section which was perfect for the weather when I ate there yesterday! Unfortunately Masa does not have my favorite sushi in Tallahassee. I prefer Tally Thai or Kiku over it for sushi specifically. My favorite thing at Masa though, which definitely far exceeds any Japenese or Chinese restaurant I’ve probably ever been to is their Crab and Cream Cheese Wontons (also known as Crab Ragoons). Masa’ are stuffed to the max and like none I have ever tasted. A MUST TRY! I also like their tuna tar tar with crispy wonton chips a lot. All in all Masa is a great place if you’re looking to get some Japanese cuisine in Tallahassee with a group.

Rib appetizer fatty and dried out. Chilean Sea Bass not as good as at old location. Tango Mango roll very good. Lesson, stick to what they do, Sushi. Also I love to test so asked for @Bottom Shelf” vodka in my vodka tonic. It was truly bottom of the shelf.

After much hype, I was wholly let down by my first experience at Masa. Upon first glance it seems to be an elegant, upscale Asian fusion restaurant, but the quality of food just didn’t match up to their reputation. I got the tuna steak, crab wontons, and tom yum soup. The the tuna steak was extremely over-​charred, dry, and lacking flavor. The tom yum soup was the worst that I’ve had here in Tally thus far for the price. The saving grace was the crab wontons, which really puts the whole experience into perspective. Anyone can deep-​fry something and make it taste good. I am not inclined to return for a second visit.

Came to Masa for the first time. Beautiful restaurant with great service. Bartender Paola was super sweet. Sushi was amazing! We had the Dirty Harry roll and Red Dragon roll. We’ll be back soon!

Masa is probably one of the best sushi restaurants I have been too & im a big sushi person. Black bean dip & vegetable roll are a definite must. Service has always been very good too

Started with an amazing seaweed salad and moved on to an amazing entrée of fried grouper filet with a spicy mayo tofu. Though unorthodox for what I ordered, I enjoyed a La Terra Cabernet.
The servers were knowledgable and friendly. Dining alone I was out the door, tip included for under $ 40.

Masa is an anachronism. As an upscale «Asian Fusion Bistro» they look good, have a fancy menu and can command higher prices. For some of those menu items — like their incredible sea bass, salt & pepper shrimp, honey-​walnut shrimp and seared sea scallop salad — they deliver. On other items, they fall so flat that you wonder whether founder and legend Lucy Ho has any idea of how many corners are being cut. Can’t imagine she would ever allow those disgraces of an egg roll to ever leave that kitchen. The worst I’ve ever eaten. Clearly frozen from some purveyor, NOT made on-​site (and a bad purveyor at that).
Earlier this week I watched a documentary on NetFlix called «The Search for General Tso,» about the evolution of Chinese restaurants in America. Made me hungry for the iconic and pedestrian General Tso chicken. Ordered it tonight from Masa. Expected Tallahassee’s premier «Asian Fusion Bistro» to hit it out of the park. Not so much. Dry, boring, listless — lacking in garlic, spice, flavor and heat. Sigh.
However, I will give high marks to their cheese won tons and steamed potstickers (both of which I presume also come from purveyors, but I guess these were just better than those God-​awful, lousy, terrible, BAD egg rolls). And their hot & sour soup is pretty good.
Seriously, Masa, you should be ashamed for serving those mushy-​innerd, skinny-​ass egg rolls. Just remove them from your menu. I love egg rolls! I always order them with Chinese food. I JUDGE Chinese restaurants by the quality of their egg rolls. Lucy Ho’s egg rolls were legendary! Plump, crispy, filled with fresh, crunchy veggies. What the heck happened? You should be ashamed! After eating yours at least a dozen times over the past several years, tonight I have vowed never again.
All in all, I think Masa is overrated — and disappointing. You’ll find much better Chinese food (and sushi) at its sister restaurant, Azu, on Apalachee Parkway, east of Capital Circle. Yes, it’s a haul from here and I have no idea why the food would be so much better when they are both owned by the same people, but it is (and, yes, even the egg rolls are better). Bizarre.

Went here for my birthday and really enjoyed it. Got the edamame with black bean sauce, cream cheese wontons, and a mixed platter of sushi for two. Also had a couple bottles of Sake. The energy was great for a Saturday night!

I decided to try the new Masa for dinner the same day I had Kikü for lunch because I wanted to have the comparisons fresh in my mind. And because I’m weird, but I digress…
First off, I would say Masa’s new location across the street from Lake Ella is a vast improvement over its original locale where one had to fight over parking with patrons visiting whatever the old Café Divorcée is called this week.
The food was just as good or better than it was at the old location. During this visit we ordered the crab wontons to start off, which were probably the best I’ve ever had. We then ordered a Dragon Roll and Pad Thai. If each of these is representative of the quality coming out of both the sushi bar and kitchen, then I would say that Masa’s has improved upon its already great quality.
Honestly, I can’t say which I prefer: Masa or Kikü, because both were exceptional in terms of food quality, service, and location’s visual appeal. But here is what I would say:
Pick Masa if you’re going in a group or otherwise in the mood for a larger restaurant with a lot of movement and activity;
Pick Kikü if you’re on a date or otherwise in the mood for a quiet, more intimate experience with service and quality as good as Masa’s.
Both, however, are winners.

The reviews for Masa were hit or miss, so we were a little skeptical when we went. We showed up around 6:30 on the evening of summer graduation and expected a madhouse. The wait was a mere 15 – 20 minutes for two and we ended up opting for a tiny table by the door to sit immediately.
Service was spotty. We saw our waitress once for water/​beer and again with the check. Food runner delivered our pad thai & sushi, nobody stopped by for refills. It was a really busy night, though we agreed we got passed over by our server because she assumed we were young and weren’t worth the attention to tip ratio.
All that said, we’ll probably come back. My sushi was good, I had the roll with salmon/​tuna — can’t remember the name. Boyfriend had pad thai and demolished it and a single roll of sushi left me a weeee bit hungry. Definitely a good place to grab an appetizer as portions aren’t enormous. It’s across town for us, so we’ll probably stick to Azu.

Went there for dinner and had the braised beef pan nang. The sauce was spicy and delishus. I had sweet potatoe fries and cabbage as my sides. Not one morsel was wasted. This place had fair service the waitress seemed to not have solid answers but we got thru the meal and it well lives up to the hype.

Good sushi. Waitress was very nice and responsive. Took a bit to get seated but after that it went well.

I now vacillate between «best sushi/​nigiri in town» places given my most recent visit to Masa’s new Lake Ella environs. It’s not that the new digs transformed this player into something greater than its previous self but rather that I likely did not pay proper respect to Masa’s depth of nigirizushi acumen.
First off — not only was Uni available, it was of the freshest color and consistency I’ve yet to have in TLH. I won’t say «better» than Kiku’s, but certainly every bit as good.
Toro was firm and the rice was expertly formed underneath.
Conch was perfectly prepared.
The rest of the family all enjoyed their plates (Pad Thai for the wife, stir-​fried for the kiddos) but I knew who was experiencing the best deal at the table!
Masa’s new location (directly across from Lake Ella in the old Tallahassee Motor Lodge parking lot) is leagues more well appointed than the warehouse it shared with Café Divorcee. Truly an exceptional experience.

I grew up eating at this restaurant and its sister restaurants. From grandma Lucy Ho’s past restaurant on Apalachee Parkway to her past Killearn location, Shaun Lee has been like family to my family. So of course, we were always patrons of his restaurant that he co-​owned, Masa.
Masa is an Asian fusion restaurant, a far cry from what was served in Lucy’s old restaurants. Shaun put a modern spin on Asian fusion cuisine, which was and still is a rare find in the small city of Tallahassee.
It had been a good year since I’d been to Masa. The interior smelled a little off but I wasn’t perturbed. It’s just the smell of small town. We were seated at our usual corner large table since we had six people for lunch Saturday. My parents were already seated and had ordered a pot of green tea. They asked for an additional pot when they realized the small pots of green tea would not be enough. Each pot later came out to be $ 3.
We examined the menu before putting in our usual orders, the Fried Calamari Masa Style ($ 8) and the Sashimi Appetizer platter ($ 12). The Fried Calamari was a small bowl of salad but allowed for each of us to have a long strip of thickly but fragrantly breaded and fried calamari. The salad dressing was sweet and sour and complemented the red peppers and romaine lettuce well. I’m sure most people aren’t weird like me, but I love when the vegetables get a little soggy and not as crisp from the sauce, because that was what happened. The sashimi came with 3 slices of salmon, 3 slices of tuna, and 3 slices of some sort of white fish that I’m not 100% able to identify. The fish was pretty fresh, just wish there was more, but I was surprised an appetizer came with so many pieces of sashimi.
We decided to go «American» and each order our own dishes, but share what we had among each other. We ordered entrees ($ 10):
Honey Walnut Shrimp
Thai Coconut Curry (with chicken)
Pork Cutlet
Pineapple Tenderloin Tips
Bulgogi Rice Bowl
Whitefish (with Shiitake Mushroom)
Each dish is heavily flavored but quite delicious. I ordered the Honey Walnut Shrimp which came with at least 8 fried shrimp, and they were not small. I was pleasantly surprised by the quantity and quality for $ 10. The Bulgogi rice was not bad but not really authentic as the Korean waitress claimed. The Pork Cutlet was fried to crispy perfection and the Whitefish was my favorite, although the mushrooms were a little too salty. The tenderloin tips were also flavored heavily but were super yummy.
I forget that the cost of living is so much lower in Tallahassee so for the prices at Masa, you get hearty and quality portions of delicious food.
Be sure to give it a try before they move the location down the street! Rumor has it, they will be opening a Korean BBQ in this store location while moving their new Masa further down Monroe St.