Terra GR — Restaurant in Grand Rapids

An email I sent the restaurant and never got a response-

I am writing to share my recent disappointing experience at Terra GR, a place my family and I have always considered one of our favorites in Grand Rapids.

We had a reservation but were seated later than scheduled. Once we were at our table, it took an unusually long time for anyone to greet us. Given the delays, we decided to order both our drinks and meals at the same time. We informed our server that we had a show to attend and asked if it would be possible to dine within an hour. She assured us she would do her best, though she was not particularly friendly or reassuring.

Unfortunately, the experience only worsened from there. When our meals finally arrived, my sister’s scallops had a strong, unpleasant fishy taste. My husband’s gnocchi was extremely mushy, resembling mashed potatoes rather than pasta, and my own pasta was served cold. When we shared our concerns, the server did apologize and offered to comp the gnocchi and a dessert, but no offer was made to bring a replacement meal, likely due to how overwhelmed the kitchen seemed.

Given our time constraints, we asked if the complimentary dessert would arrive in time, and she could not guarantee it. We waited as long as we could, but ultimately had to leave without receiving it.

What made this experience even more disappointing is that I had chosen your restaurant to impress my sister, who lives in Atlanta and is an avid foodie. I had hoped to show her that Grand Rapids could rival the dining scenes of larger cities. Sadly, our experience left us feeling rushed, overlooked, and dissatisfied.

We understand that busy nights happen, but the service, food quality, and lack of care in handling our situation were not what we have come to expect from Terra GR. I truly hope you take this feedback seriously, as we would love to continue recommending and visiting your restaurant...

Really wanted to love Terra with how delicious sounding the menu was, but overall just wasn’t impressed.

From the beginning of walking in the door and greeting the hostess with a big friendly “hello we have a reservation”, the response we received was a monotone “okay” and she led us to our table and walked away without saying anything else. Not a great start with setting the morning vibes.

The sever on the other hand had a delightful personality and she was super patient with the three of us as we browsed the menu during our business meeting.

We ended up starting with the donut of the day—some sort of apple cider flavor—and it was amazing. Fluffy, not too sweet, and definitely fresh. We also ordered the breakfast pizza for the table and it was pretty good as well—could have used a bit more cheese and less of their house potatoes but we enjoyed it nevertheless.

For mains we split the PB French toast and the breakfast burrito. The French toast was alright flavor wise but the portion was pretty small with it only being one slice on the plate. The breakfast burrito was very boring, completely lacking the pop of spices you’d expect in a burrito and it also fell apart once we picked it up making it super messy and difficult to eat. The house potatoes that come with the burrito were inedible. They were so undercooked they almost had a crunch to them, and not in a good crispy way, a raw way. The seasoning on them was way too one-toned with extreme amounts of paprika/chili powder being the only thing you tasted. Nobody could stand to eat the potatoes so those got left behind on the plate as well as a half portion of the burrito.

So even though the donut was phenomenal and the pizza was decent, it’s not enough of a wow experience to make us want to come back for another rude Saturday morning greeting and...

I've been here a few times and the food is great! During my. most recent visit (which was in October, I just haven't gotten around to reviewing yet) I was there as part of a going-away party for a friend. I appreciated the custom menus. However, I was very surprised by the poor service. There were 8 of us total in the group, and we are all in our mid-20s. The waiter was very standoffish and barely even looked at or acknowledged us. He seemed almost annoyed as we ordered. We were not overly loud and made no special requests, so I don't understand his attitude. What bothered me most though, was that four of us had out of state IDs and ordered drinks. The waiter took our IDs and left without an explanation. When he finally came back (without the IDs), we asked him where they were and he responded that they were being checked in the basement. They had our IDs for almost 15 minutes and when he came back, he gave them to us without so much as a glance or a word to us. I absolutely understand that restaurants are more suspicious of out of state IDs. however we're all 24/25 and don't look underage, so being treated like we were kids trying to use fakes and having our IDs being "checked" in their basement (no idea what that's about) for so long with minimal to no communication or apology after was very frustrating. All of our other friends had their drinks and we were sitting their just hoping we'd get our IDs back. So, overall it has great food and a good atmosphere, but my most recent service experience was awful. Our waiter was so short to us the entire time I felt like I had offended him or done something wrong. I've been here several times, though and this was the first time that I had poor service and the first time my ID was questioned...