TROLLING FOR SUSHI IN VERY CROWDED WATERS

Sushi, once a shocking new culinary innovation on this side of the Pacific, has entered the mainstream. But as trendy sushi bars open their doors with increasing frequency, the competition for customers is heating up. Good ingredients and technical expertise are no longer enough; these days creativity counts. In Los Angeles, the truly creative sushi bar offers such innovations as new-wave sushi, high-tech sushi, floating sushi, celebrity sushi chefs and even a sushi-bar featuring female sushi chefs--something that is completely unheard of in Japan.

NEW-WAVE SUSHI: The Sushi House (12013 W. Pico Blvd., 479-1507) is a delightful place but if you bargained for a sushi bar with traditional Japanese music playing quietly in the background, you bargained wrong. When you walk in you are greeted by gregarious sushi chefs who fill in as stand-up comics while performing their culinary art; from the time you enter, there is non-stop laughter. While I was there one chef made a pair of earrings out of his wooden chop-sticks. Another was entertaining a couple by telling them a newly acquired joke. Still another was singing and swaying to the reggae music that was blasting throughout the extremely small restaurant. One drawback to this new-wave sushi bar is that the music is played at thunderous decibel levels.

HIGH-TECH SUSHI: Tokyo Sushi in Marina del Rey (13490 Maxella Ave., 827-0949) and Gardena (1831 W. Redondo Beach Blvd., 516-0499) is a high-tech sushi bar where you can eat what you see, when you like, because the menu is live and in color, via conveyor belt. They are offering assembly-line dining.

Robert Endo, president of Tokyo Sushi, explained that when they opened their first shop five years ago, the conveyor belt was common in Japan. But things in Japan change fast, and these days the computer has replaced the conveyor belt. Not to be outdone, come September, Tokyo Sushi will open its first computer-dining establishment.

The restaurant will be equipped with computer terminals at every table, Endo says. The terminals will display miniature pictures along with the menu, and customerswill orderwith a light sensitive pen. The computer will also allow patrons to order as much as they want without ever saying a word.

“Some sushi chefs don’t speak English,” Endo says, “and many customers don’t understand the Japanese dialect. With the computer there will be no communication problems and no misunderstandings.”

SENSUOUS SUSHI: Hoshi Park, owner of La Sushi (129 N. La Cienega Blvd., 659-9639), has gone in the opposite direction: He has a sushi bar unlike anything in Japan. “The Westside has more than 30 different types of sushi bars and I wanted to stand out,” Park says. His solution? A sushi bar with female chefs. The chefs, who range between the ages of 21 and 29, are very adept at what they do. This is surprising when you consider that they learned their technique a mere two weeks before the opening of La Sushi.

CELEBRITY SUSHI: When I first approached the front door of Japon Sushi (8412 West 3rd St., 852-1223), I thought I had come to the wrong place. From the outside, it looks more like an ice cream parlor than a sushi bar.

Decorated in pastel shades of pink and blue with neon lights running along the ceiling, there is music from the ‘50s and ‘60s played just loud enough to set a friendly mood. An Amateur Celebrity Sushi Night is held every Sunday. The night I went, singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop (he wrote the theme for “Tootsie”) was the celebrity chef. Although Bishop did an excellent job, Koji Kimura, owner of Japon, stole the show with his gracious personality and his artistic sushi creations. Everyone here is so friendly, customers included, you feel you are eating at home.

“The idea for celebrity sushi night came about when one of our customer’s sons wanted to learn how to make sushi and approached us,” says Phyliss Kimura, wife and partner of Koji. “After that the idea just evolved.”

FLOATING SUSHI: Momoyama (911 Broxton Ave., Westwood, 208-7781) has a high-tech look with a sushi bar situated in the center of the floor. Still, among all the new sushi places, this is the one that seems the closest to fast food.

There is a little canal filled with water in front of the counter, and the sushi floats temptingly past on little boats. Diners snatch the sushi that they want off the boats, and at the end of the meal, the plates are counted and the bill is presented. There is a genuine, childish excitement pervading the place, which may have something to do with adolescent memories of toys in the bath water.

But no matter whether you are getting your sushi off a boat or from a computer, isn’t it nice to know, in this world of carbon copies, video recorders, Xerox machines and movie remakes, that there are still some originals?