Mara Restaurant and Bar - Mediterranean restaurant in Minneapolis - 245 Hennepin Ave, USA

The most gorgeous design in the Twin Cities!! Every detail is absolutely stunning!! We got seated in the best booth, overlooking the entire restaurant. The food was scrumptious. Their tomato sauce is THE BEST I’ve ever tasted!!! I’d love to learn their secret, because I can’t get enough of it! Best frites in town as well. AND the best kids meals in town also - I highly recommend! My Chardonnay was pretty amazing as well. I love this wonderful addition to the city, it’s fine dining the way it should be. 😍 A must go to place!!

Great food, cozy vibe, sophisticated decor, and extraordinary service! My husband and I came here for the first time to celebrate my birthday and Travis and Thony took great care of us! I’m not much of a Mediterranean food type person, but Mara’s take on it was so good! The food was flavorful and curated beautifully. Highly recommend!

Looking for a place where the food is excellent and the staff is just wonderful? Then go to Mara, for lunch/dinner/drinks. Try the Humus with Crispy chickpeas, Octopus Carpaccio, Lamb Tartare, Salted Baked Branzino, Beef Filet Mignon, Crisp potatoes, Beet Cured Petuna Trout, ah heck, try it all! Finish with a soufflé or flourless chocolate cake. They have delicious mock-tails and cocktails. Lovely NA choices. I just have to add that the people preparing the food and serving are fantabulous. Hats off to the chef. Now… go and enjoy.

Located inside the Four Seasons Hotel in North Loop, this establishment has one of the best decor settings I have seen anywhere in Minneapolis, and I think the fact that it is inside the hotel most likely has a lot to do with it. My partner and I went there for our wedding anniversary and we had a great experience there for sure. Our server was very nice and very attentive to our needs. The food was tasty in general. And it was just a great time after getting out of the pool upstairs while staying in the hotel. My favorites are the two items under the "To Share" section on the menu: hummus and baba ghanoush. I know they are both common dishes one can find in a Mediterranean restaurant, but Mara did it even better by making the hummus and eggplant dip more flavorful than typically, as they contained tahini and tapenade. It tasted so amazing! I also really appreciated the fact that the hummus came with pita bread (the pita tasted amazing) and the baba ghanoush came with crudités. It made me realize some new about food combinations. My other two favorites are the desserts. The chocolate decadence and the maraklava are both amazing and very finely decorated, painted with edible gold brush. Both desserts came with either ice cream or sorbet which were huge pluses. I highly recommend both to anyone visiting Mara in the future. The bucatini was good as well, although the lobster flavor did not quite seep into the pasta or the pasta sauce, which would have been perfection. The lamp chops were pretty tasty with the sauce carrying majority of the flavor. The scallop crudo was gone too fast that we could not really have a moment to procee what it tasted like. The amount was very small. I am not sure if the spring onion, rhubarb, or the preserved orange made a huge difference in defining its flavor. With all that said, I must admit that other than the four dishes I happened to like the most (to share's and desserts), I think the prices for the other dishes were a bit outrageous. Every entrée was over $30 which was uncommon even in fancy establishments. My two lamb chops that were not abundant in portion were $42 in total. And the scallop crudo that we barely had any due to its small amount was $23. Our bill easily went over $200 as a result and even in upscale establishments it wouldn't be like such. The amount (and at times, taste) and the price was not balanced. My favorite dishes happened to be the cheapest. But on second thought, I wouldn't be surprised if the high prices have something to do with it being inside Four Seasons. Would I recommend this establishment? Definitely a yes. I just do not know how frequently people want to visit here but it surely is a great place for date nights and fancy occasions in general. As long as one does not mind the prices, then it is in fact perfect in pretty much every way!

This was a real chill vibe, with excellent food and service! Parking: they offer valet for $10 or you find metered street parking. Service: Kyle was our server, he was extremely knowledgeable about the menu and recommended some good things for us to try. He was also very attentive and made sure we didn't need or want anything. Food: I'll be honest I was not sure about anything on the menu when I looked at it online. However every single dish I tried was amazing, full of flavor, and cooked just right. I will mostly be visiting again soon! I highly recommend this place to anyone looking to expand their palate.

Very nice place. I came early so it was a nice ambiance. As the place fills, the noise is overwhelming. The food is tasty. Portions adequate. The presentation of food was good. The thing which was abolutely lacking is service. Attention of the staff is sparse. They are focused on clients with wine testing. The kitchen is incredibly slow. It takes 30 minutes to get any part of the meal. Noise with long wait impacted the experience.

The food was underwhelming at best, and the selection of cocktails were not great. The atmosphere was pretty great, and the service the same. However, overall I wouldn’t recommend this place. I would go to Spoon & Stable instead.

went for dinner. server took long to get to us, after they cleared our table and (after the crowd died down) we were waiting awhile on the birthday dessert. service was lacking. server started serving wine to a table nearby while our table had already been cleared and waited on the birthday dessert. the birthday dessert was very underwhelming, 3 chocolate truffles. personally the food wasn’t for me, just didn’t taste good. the pasta was not the best, food wasn’t flavorful. although i do know it is mediterranean food, that could just not be my kind of palette. beautiful place though and atmosphere was nice.