Maru Sushi & Grill — Restaurant in Grand Rapids

I don’t normally do reviews but this time I just felt it needed to be done. We have been going here for a long time and have always loved it but over the past 6-8 months things have declined. A couple months ago I went in by myself on my lunch and waited a really long time for my food. I thought, ok things happen so I’ll go back again. Last Sunday my husband and two kids (6,12) went in and I had told everyone not to eat before we went so that they would eat their food. We went in around 2:30 (so kind of an off hour) and there were about 6 tables of people. We ended up waiting over 45 minutes for three rolls and some fried rice. My husband and I had both had a drink and it was long gone by the time we got our food. The waitress knew it was off and kept coming back to our table to tell us our food would be 5 more minutes. (This was not true any of the times). We all started getting grumpy as we were starving. When are food finally did come I asked the waitress what was going on and she said she feels like they don’t staff the sushi line well enough. I told her that was an incredibly long time for a nearly empty restaurant to get food out. She just said sorry and went about her business. She was nice and I don’t blame her at all but I just feel like in cases like that they should at least offer a quick app or salad or something to hold people over if the wait is that long. We weren’t offered any discount or a free drink or anything. I also feel like the quantity and presentation of the food does not really match the prices. We love sushi and normally get a lot for what we pay for and there are always elaborate options if we want to get really fun with it. Like I said, I have always loved Maru but Grand Rapids has a lot of options now for sushi so I think they should try and address this issue. $100 for lunch is quite expensive when you aren’t getting the service and food that should come along with that price tag. Sadly, we will not be visiting this restaurant...

Update 5-31: Yet another poor experience with a pick up here. Upon arrival the head sushi chef told the host 5 minutes and STILL didn't have the order 18m later. Or they will tell you it's not due until a certain time. Without realizing that the due time is printed on the receipt. As you can see in the photo the order was due at 1:25 and I didn't receive it until 1:40. It's like this restaurant lies on purpose to prevent the driver from dropping the order and making their restaurant from looking bad to the delivery services. The manager always says they will work on giving proper estimates and then it's always we a little behind. Say that up front then I can decide to go on to another order instead of now LOSING money on this delivery.

Starting to dread coming here for take out or as a delivery driver. The order is never ready when it's supposed to be. They will give you a completion time and that time won't be accurate either. And when you ask again the host staff are less than friendly telling you it will be ready when it's ready basically. It doesn't matter if you have other plans or are working hard to deliver for the restaurants. It's a shame as the food is quite good. Also drivers must be less important as a customer came for a take out order and the host invited him to have a seat at the bar and if he'd like something to drink. I got no such offer. Waited well over 30 minutes more than triple the time she told me it would be finished. Even my diner was getting annoyed with the wait and contacted me twice as they also had plans after dinner. And it's not the wait that's the most upsetting it's the fact that the staff don't care they are literally taking money out of my pocket. If you tell me ten minutes I'll wait patiently. If you tell me 30-40 I'll unassign the order and let another driver arrive close to the ready time. All in all I definitely prefer the Bridge...

TLDR: I haven’t been here in years and honestly I don’t know why! Great sushi, lovely drinks, nice atmosphere and great service ❤️

We started out with a dragon fruit collins (vodka, dragon fruit, lime, soda) which was very tasty and not too sweet, along with a hot herbal tea… that I didn’t like at all 😬😫. I asked if I could order a green tea and the server was so kind, that without us asking for it, (I figured we’d pay for both) she took the first tea off the bill! 🤩

I had a miso soup, which was exactly as expected, but for some reason I really liked the presentation- it looked pretty to me so I snapped more pics than usual 🤪.

It’s been almost 2 months since the actual visit (I’m trying to catch up on reviews… oopsie) so I’m not 100% sure what the names of all the rolls were, but I can tell you we enjoyed them all!

What I THINK we ordered:

nirvana tempura smoked salmon, crab salad, avocado, cream cheese, eel sauce, honey wasabi aioli, masago, scallion

crouching tiger panko fried shrimp, cream cheese, crab salad, shrimp, avocado, fantasy sauce, eel sauce, honey wasabi aioli, masago, scallion

Spicy Tuna Roll spicy tuna, cucumber, scallion, pickled peppers

Overall we really enjoyed our meal here and plan to return again soon.

UPDATE: so apparently I had gone to two Maru sushi’s and accidentally left a review for the one on bridge as this one… so all the last photos are from a place that is no more- however, my update is on the correct restaurant 😅 oooops

When we visited, it was raining hard, not that had outdoor seating covered by an awning, and it was still warm as it was the end of summer, so we enjoyed sitting there.

Drink specials were the dragonfruit collins and the tropical?? Mule (I forgot the actual name of it but it had mango in it and was delicious).

We got miso soup and an assortment of sushi rolls. All of it was amazing,...