This sushi restaurant is moving in South Hill. Here’s where it’s going

This year will mark the second time Trapper’s Sushi in South Hill has moved. It’s for a good reason. The family-friendly sushi restaurant keeps outgrowing its spaces. 

By volume, the South Hill store is the busiest Trapper’s location of the 11 in the Puget Sound area.   

“The space is so much bigger,” said owner Trapper O’Keefe, a Bonney Lake resident.

He’ll move Trapper’s next door to the former Ram Sunrise Village space, which has permanently closed (the other Ram Restaurant & Brewery location near South Hill Mall continues to operate). 

The new Sunrise Village space for Trapper’s is a few steps away across a plaza outfitted with outdoor seating. 

The new space is 6,600 square feet, a huge step up from the first Trapper’s South Hill location, which was around 1,700 square feet. The first home for Trapper’s in South Hill was where Sushi Ari operates now, adjacent to South Hill Mall. It opened in 2010. Five years later, Trapper’s moved to Sunrise Village in the former home of Sushi Station. 

“With take-out being so huge, we’re out of space,” said O’Keeffe. “We need extra space. That would be helpful. We learned a lot with Covid with our take-out process. We want to make sure those customers are taken care of.” 

In the huge former Ram space, he intends to work on the design to cater to more take-out customers. “We’re having a large section for pickup/takeout so that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the rest of the restaurant,” he said. 

The decor of Trapper’s is thematic at each location: flashes of silver, bright blue and black with a pop-focused soundtrack. 

The new palate of the Sunrise Village location will be softer in design, O’Keeffe said. He said it will mirror the decor of the new Tacoma location, which reopened this summer after a long hiatus. That Sixth Avenue restaurant closed in 2017 to make way for the construction of a six-story retail-residential building. 

As with all the other locations, the Sunrise Village Trapper’s will feature oversized and dressed up maki rolls, as well as nigiri and sashimi, plus kid-friendly dishes such as chicken teriyaki. The restaurant carries all the necessary accessories for family-friendly dining (high chairs, helper chopsticks, a robust kids menu, etc). Did I mention the soundtrack and din is just loud enough to disguise crying toddlers? 

Expect almost no downtime with the move. Like when the restaurant moved the last time in South Hill and when it moved its Bonney Lake store a few years ago, there will only be a day or so of time in between the current Trapper’s closing in Sunrise Village and the new location opening. 

Expect the move and reopening to take place at the end of 2021, if all goes as planned. 

TRAPPER’S SUSHI

Puyallup location: 10305 156th St. E., Puyallup 

Web: https://www.trapperssushi.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trapperssushi/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trapperssushi

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