Mackinac Island’s first sushi restaurant, Sushi Grand, will open at the Grand Hotel next month, offering traditional sushi as well as daily special sushi rolls.
Dan Musser, president of the Grand Hotel, says he decided to open the restaurant after seeing success with offering sushi as a special at the hotel’s Jockey Club restaurant last summer.
“We had a very loyal group of locals that would come for that,” Musser says. “More than that, I know there’s a market for it. It’s kind of the new steakhouse, if you will, for someone looking for a special event.”
He says the 1,500-square-foot restaurant will offer traditional rolls, Sashimi, sushi, and miso soup. Sushi Grand has 25 seats — a combination of table and bar seating — and also offers carryout options.
Sushi Grand was designed by the Grand Hotel’s longtime interior designer, Carleton Varney of Dorothy Draper and Co. in New York City. Musser says the restaurant has a custom painting, a painted map of Japan on the ceiling, Cooley rice hat light fixtures, and a floor that look similar to pebbles.
“The bar itself has almost what looks like gold bars but they’re actually a ceramic tile,” he says. “There’s a lot of gold, rich red, and black (colors).”
Sushi Grand is scheduled to open in mid-May, just after the hotel’s annual opening on May 6. Musser says the Grand Hotel is also in the process of re-finishing half of the 660-foot front porch, along with re-painting the wood furniture and adding in blackout drapes in about half of the guest rooms in time for the hotel’s spring opening.
The 390-room hotel originally opened in 1887. ​
