Restaurant Review:

The number of sushi places in the Newport Beach-Costa Mesa area is fairly astounding to me because it makes me wonder how they all stay in business.

One bite of a piece of yellowtail and I instantly knew how Maru Sushi has been around for as long as it has.

The restaurant is self-categorized as upscale, and the decor of the dining room reflected that. I liked the expansiveness of the main room that seemed to be far away from the sushi bar itself. Most places are smaller, and trying to talk above the patrons at the sushi bar can be difficult, but here conversations were certainly possible.

One thing that doesn’t adhere to the upscale philosophy is the prices. My guest and I got several pieces of sushi, an appetizer, a salad and two rolls and walked out having spent less than $50.

The quality of every dish we got was pretty good, especially the sushi. The restaurant has a 50% special right now featuring both sushi and rolls. There are 20 pieces of sushi that are half off and 15 rolls that are less than $5.

On the sushi list, we got yellowtail, salmon, seared tuna and albacore, all of which were fresh and of a generous size.

We didn’t try any of the rolls that were on special, but it wasn’t because we didn’t want to. We just had so much other food we wanted to try.

The appetizers looked fairly appealing, and there were a couple I hadn’t seen on a Japanese menu before. Shrimp Shumai and sesame chicken are usually found more on Chinese menus than Japanese, but we gave the sesame chicken a try.

The chicken was good, the quality pretty high, but the sauces that came with it were fairly confusing. The dish is made with spicy mayonnaise, eel sauce and sweet and sour.

The sweet and sour dominates the other two, and I wouldn’t have known they were in there unless I asked.

I liked the dish, but think I would have been better off with another appetizer, such as the soft shell crab or scallop dynamite. The people next to us were enjoying the calamari tempura, and I will be ordering that on my next visit.

My guest wanted a salad, so she ordered the salmon skin salad. It was filled with baked salmon, shredded carrots, sliced tomatoes and bonito flakes. I also liked that they used romaine lettuce instead of iceberg.

The salad came out a bit dry, but that was easily fixed with some ginger dressing on the side.

Like the appetizer section, I thought there was a nice choice of salads. There are eight of them, and they have everything from a crab salad to a seaweed salad.

The rolls were next, and we dove in, getting a lobster roll and the Maru special roll.

The lobster roll was a mix of lobster tempura, avocado, imitation crab meat and cucumber. It came on a plate that was decorated with eel and spicy mayonnaise sauce. The lobster was a fairly generous piece, and I thought for $12.99 it was worth the price.

The roll was one of 15 tempura specialty rolls Maru offers. Most were in the $9 and $10 range.

Next we ordered one of the chef’s special rolls, the Maru. It is scallop, spicy tuna, imitation crab meat, avocado and cucumber. This roll was good as well, and I liked the spicy tuna and scallop combination. It had a different texture than other rolls, softer and moist, and was a joy to eat.

This is a great place for sushi and joins some of the better places in Costa Mesa. It is definitely a growing list.

Maru Sushi

Address: 1500 Adams Ave., Costa Mesa

Phone: (714) 438-1115

Website: www.marusushi.net

Cuisine: Japanese

Specialty dish: One of the five chef specialty dishes

Alcohol served: Beer, wine and sake

Entrée price range: $2.25 to $79.95

Family friendly: Yes

Credit cards accepted: MasterCard, American Express, Discover and Visa

Rating: *** 1/2

JOHN REGER reviews local restaurants and may be contacted at [email protected] or P.O. Box 2984, Seal Beach, CA 90740.