Matsuya

Great to finally found a place that serve our favorite otsumami that's on the menu all year round. Ok chawanmushi and dobimushi was bland to be honest. Service was great and friendly.

Understaffed but service was still great. Only one wait staff on a weekend night but she was friendly and efficient. The manager(?) patiently recommended suitable sake options that would fit us knowing we weren't looking for expensive options and hardly able to drink much. We enjoyed nearly all the food except the marinated firefly squid which was extremely fishy. Loved that their sashimi platter that didn't include salmon as a default like most places. The grilled lamb was heavy on sauce but on point taste wise with the chillies giving it a nice kick. Fresh fat clams in the soup. Dobin mushi had lots of ingredients but a mistake to serve it with lemon. Tatami iwashi came crispy and toasty! 10/10 must order this as it gets addictive. The rest were pretty decent. Most people come for their omakase sets.

The place was quite empty for a Friday night compared to it's lunch crowd the last time we went. They were about 1.5hrs to closing. Only 1 service staff, efficient and polite. Overall, food was appetising. The black pork could have been a little more tender though. The teapot soup could also be more flavourful. Parking was difficult to get at that hour so we parked at Raffles hotel for about 5 bucks. Definitely a place to re-visit.

Best Fugu (puffer fish) - tasted like bakwa, really tender. Grilled Hamachi cheek super juicy! We also had the aburi salmon maki - superb! And a substantial bowl of miso soup packed with wakame & tofu. Everything looked so good, forgot abt photos 😋

It was...average and a tad disappointing. I wonder why this place is rated so highly. We had the 7-course omakase (about $107 nett with green tea) Seem like they had many regular customers. Service was friendly and they try to seek your feedback after each course. As a home cook, I think I can make two courses out of the Omakase set. Having been to a popular Omakase place in Tanjong Pagar, you can't help but compare and this fell quite short in terms of food quality and creativity. At least sashimi was fresh. An interesting course was fish liver. They didn't have a tempura course and prepared a radish dish with asari clams which was savoury and something I've not tried before.