Mari's Japanese Cuisine - Schenectady

My fiancé and I have come here a few times, most recently for our anniversary last week.

This unassuming little sushi joint is a lovely little surprise for the areaThe staff is friendly, the food is good, and the prices are reasonable.

Mari's is a peaceful, delightful, independently owned little restaurant with delicious food.

This review is for a GrubHub delivery order. Ordered one appetizer of veggie tempura, one spicy crab salad. One dragon roll and two Chirashi meals. The veggie tempura consisted of six aneamically small pieces of vegetables he size of most tempura appetizer servings I 've had at other places. Crab salad has too much mayonaisse and not enough crab or spice. The dragon roll had overly ripe avocadoes on top and the rice on the outside of the roll fell apart when picked up. The Chirashi bowls: they forgot to serve with ginger. Four of the eight pieces of scattered fish consisted of two fake crab sticks and two sad tamago omelets. The tamago was sad because the layers were loose and fell apart when picked up, as if made by an amateur chef. One was served with an ok miso soup, the other with a house salad with an intolerable excuse for ginger dressing. The Chirashi bowls, for two small ill prepared tamago, two fish sticks, two I hope it was tuna, one white fish and one overcooked shrimp, along with rice and soup or salad, were $22 a piece. The total miserable meal was a little over $80 dollars. Embarrassing to call this sushi. Mari 's should be ashamed they let this out the door.

It pains me to have to downgrade for my updated review. The pattern I've noticed with Mari's is that meals are largely not fully fleshed out and they made me want to not get them again. The nabeyaki is the most recent examine. A single shrimp tempura on a saucer with udon? All other similar venues I've dined at serve two or three, if not more, pieces of tempura to go with udon. The katsu is another example where the perfectly cooked katsu goes nowhere because there's only a pinch of cabbage and shredded carrots you go with it, and similar venues offer a complete, well-thought-out, satisfying meal experience that have included accompaniments like different pickles and korotke. I give props to them for their agedashi tofu and mixed tempura, but their Rainbow roll got me flabbergasted because it was so basic and not unexciting to look at and eat. I hope they continue to improve and adapt.