Ronin Sushi — Restaurant in Royal Oak

I went to Ronin with my boyfriend on a Friday evening over the thanksgiving holiday. We assumed it would be pretty crowded so we tried to get there early. We ended up getting there around 5:45 (they open at 6) and we were seated right away (we got one of the last two open tables). Turns out we also made it in time for happy hour. Score! Their happy hour menu had an excellent selection from their menu and we ordered 5 or 6 dishes from there. The only regular menu items we ordered was a spicy tuna roll, a dragon roll and a side of rice.

We started the meal with seaweed salad and edamame. The seaweed salad was out of this world amazing! I have never had it before and I was surprised how much I liked it because the name is really not that appealing. If you have never had it, definitely give it a try, it mostly tastes like sesame, but has a very lovely crunch. The edamame was alright, but I am not a huge fan of it, it seems really flavorless to me, but my boyfriend liked it. We also ordered drinks from the happy hour menu, I had the merlot which was alright and my boyfriend got the beer with the sake which he really enjoyed.

Next our sushi rolls came out. We got two spicy salmon crunch rolls (from the happy hour menu) a spicy tuna roll and the dragon roll. The spicy salmon crunch roll was my favorite! The tuna roll was very similar, but I like that the salmon roll is a chunk of salmon instead of ground like the tuna roll, it more of an appealing texture to me, the tastes are very similar. To be fair, I had also just recently had a really amazing tuna roll in Florida, that pretty much nothing outside of Japan could live up to.

In addition to the sushi, we also ordered the Kobe sliders. They came out with two sliders and a huge mound of shoestring French fries. I didn't have any because after two classes of wine, the appetizers, and two sushi rolls, I was full, but my boyfriend said they were amazing. I tried one of the fries and it was really good, but we left most of them because we were so full.

Overall it was really great, I would go back every day and highly recommend it as a place to get good sushi in metro Detroit. When we go back we will definitely try to make happy hour again and just order from that menu it...

First visit "5-star" review: Best selection of house rolls. Noble fish has super fresh sushi, sashimi, and nigiri, but less of a selection.

My personal fav is still Kirin sushi near the railroad tracks in Hammond, Louisiana.

Second visit "3-star" review: It's overpriced for the atmosphere. This sums up a lot of the other reviews I read and "liked" by other local guides.

Ups: Royal oak college crowd Good tasting sushi Good variety Clean restaurant and clean women's restroom Decent service on both my visits (No complaints, great service from Ross on second visit)

Downs: Have to pay for street parking or valet parking Poor presentation of special maki rolls No free soup or salad with dinner Expensive sushi Expensive drinks ($10 mixed drinks, $13 martinis) Poor waiting area for the volume of customers

It doesn't bother me or my kids, but you don't automatically get forks, you get standard disposable chop sticks.

Water is in caraffes on the table without ice. I love ice water, freezing cold, with lemon.

Low-sodium soy sauce? Not sure, I'd have to ask how to get this. Soy sauce is in little pots on the tables.

My $14 mountain dew roll was good, but I expected more of a $14 roll. The six pieces of special maki were served with the tuna and salmon rolls, all on the same plate. I'm used to special rolls being artfully presented on their own plate, and having a special sauce accompany it.

My daughter's ginger salad was tasty, but we paid an extra $5 for it. My other daughter's soup was good, but we paid extra for this as well. $5 for same edamame I've paid $2 for elsewhere.

There are no kids' menus, but my daughters grew up on sushi in Hammond, LA, so we're all sushi-savvy. Not sure how the restaurant would handle less sophisticated kids.

We don't plan to return. I'll look for another nice sushi restaurant with more positives for the price, or...

The hostess was welcoming and polite. We were sat in the dining room with a party of 9, they only allow 8 guest per table but it was end of the night. Our server Mackenzie was off as soon as she greeted them table. We ordered our food and it came out at different times which was expected for such a large group, but 2 of our 9 guests waited an additional 20/25 minutes to be served their orders, and 4/6 rolls were missing. Keep in mind we didn’t bug her about how long it was taking.

We brought it to the attention of our waitress Mackenzie and she then told us that she rang in everything we ordered, while i was replying to her she ignores me and turns her back to me and walks away. It took her 10 minutes to come and tell us that the kitchen is closed and she was unable to do anything about it. The manager comes out and I explain to her how rude she was and she then tells me our customers don’t usually say that about Mackenzie. She didn’t acknowledge the fact that we had a completely different experience then said typical guests.

When it came time to pay the bill, she brought it out and my brother got up to ask the manager a question about it and again, she tells him I got to go laughing and turns her back to him. We work in the restaurant business and we were patient with the fact that you can get overwhelmed with a large party, but she was extremely rude and would disappear for 10 minutes at a time.

Maybe they did not take us seriously because we were a younger crowd, but this is not how you accommodate your so called guests and we used to be regulars here, but after this experience we will not be coming back. Good food,...