RESTAURANTS / Max Jacobson : Umi’s Fare Ranges From Wonderful to Fair

I have to confess that I was more than a bit surprised to see a puppy at the sushi bar in Umi, a high-tech Japanese restaurant on Newport Boulevard. There he was, perched on his hind legs for a better view of the uni (sea urchin), ikura (salmon roe), unagi (sea eel) and other goodies behind the counter, while his master--one of the customers--watched him faithfully. We didn’t catch what they ordered.

After a couple of visits to this modern, imaginative and sometimes sloppy operation, I came away feeling a bit waggish myself. The food at this restaurant has a lot of originality, and some of it is wonderful. But table service is slow and the quality of the restaurant’s hot prepared dishes is spotty--sit at the sushi bar, where things run more efficiently.

The room is a small, artful space, painted a sleek pastel gray. A striking, geometric, three-tiered overhang magically extends the sushi bar upward, and black-lacquer tables embellished with spare bamboo mats and cloth napkins provide the restaurant with its one touch of elegant conservatism. Don’t expect piped in koto or shamisen music--that would be far too traditional. New-age jazz fits the place a whole lot better and, besides, that’s what you hear in Tokyo these days.

Sushi at Umi is generally fresh and handsomely crafted, but what stands out particularly is the quality of the rice. The Japanese discuss the taste of rice almost endlessly, and often eat it plain, with nothing to disguise its flavors. And at a sushi restaurant, the rice is almost always of the best quality. Umi’s rice is no exception. Short-grain Japanese rice is used. It’s shiny, fluffy and soft--so soft I could eat it plain myself, or at least garnished with nothing more than tsukemono (Japanese pickles).

Not that I ever would--the fish is too good to pass up here. Ask for omakase , literally “chef’s choice,” and you might get a delightfully smooth piece of raw salmon; some chewy, flavorful octopus; hot, smoky eel; hamachi , or yellowtail; and some fine, fatty tuna belly, all draped over sculpted pieces of vinegared rice arranged like little flowers on a silvered tray.

But as omakase changes from day to day (depending on the chef’s mood and what he thinks tastes freshest), you may get a totally different selection than what I enjoyed. Maybe you’ll get sea urchin in a seaweed wrapper, yellowtail, flying fish roe, sweet shrimp and pounded squid. And you can always order a la carte. If you do, don’t miss the salmon-skin roll filled with jewel-like slices of carrot, cucumber and gobo (burdock root), or the wonderfully creamy sea urchin, which is often sold out.

One of my Japanese guests pointed out that the sushi at Umi was not cut as perfectly as it would have been in a top establishment, a complaint that may be more meaningful in Tokyo than in Newport Beach. But after a fashion I too began to observe a pattern of tiny lapses in service and presentation.

This became more apparent when hot dishes began to arrive. Hot appetizers and entrees can also be ordered at the sushi bar, but because they take up more space, you may be asked to move to one of the tables. There you get colorful menus, printed on pretty confetti rice paper, which list the dozens of specialty dishes. A few off-menu specials are recited by the waiter.

This is where things may get frustrating. Many of the dishes are quite good; some are just so-so. But both nights I dined there, I found the hot kitchen woefully slow and dishes did not come out in the sequence in which they were ordered--despite the fact that the restaurant was not full.

Umi Japanese scallop casserole was one of the good ones, a mixture of scallop, shiitake and shimeji mushroom, with the surprise addition of mirugai (giant clam), baked en coquille in a light mayonnaise sauce. Umi Japanese steak was another hit: tender sliced steak in a light demi-glace with ginger, garlic and shallot, plated beautifully with nicely cooked green bean and carrot, and the bonus of a lemon slice covered with flying fish roe. I wish everything else worked as well.

Fried dishes were especially erratic: The house tempura, batter-fried morsels of fish and vegetables, came out leaden and soggy, not at all crisp and light as it should have been. And many of the other fry dishes, such as shibaebi (small shrimp) and soft-shell crab, simply lacked the delicacy that they needed to make them stand on their own.

Better were the special karei (deep-fried flounder served Chinese style, fried bones and all) and the deep-fried mustard crumbs chicken, a fine, flaky half chicken stuffed with heady pinches of pungent Japanese mustard and then rolled in spicy crumbs.

We finished with an upbeat bar snack called yaki-onigiri , which are usually eaten at Japanese picnics . These are grilled triangles of sushi rice filled with a variety of things such as umeboshi (Japanese pickled plum), shiokombu (salted seaweed) or kazuobushi (shaved bonito). They are absolutely delicious and not on the menu, so by all means ask for them. Don’t worry about not finishing. They travel well in a doggie bag.

Umi is inexpensive to moderate. Sushi starts at $3. Appetizers are $4.50 to $7. Entrees, which come with miso soup, salad, steamed rice and fresh fruit are $11.50 to $14.50.

UMI

2075 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa.

(714) 631-2208.

Open for lunch Tuesday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; dinner Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday 5:30 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday until 11 p.m. Closed Monday.

American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.