RESTAURANT REVIEW : Mako Sushi’s Perfect Presentation Nourishes Diner With ‘Happy Moments’

For weeks or even months on end I can forget the greatest virtue of good food--that it can make me happy. No doubt my memory fails because most of the food I eat isn’t all that great. I only recall how happy a meal can make me when suddenly I look up from my plate and feel well-taken-care-of, nourished, safe and delighted.

Two such moments occurred recently, and both took place at Mako Sushi in Sherman Oaks.

Mako Sushi has only been open about six months. It’s another one of those mini-mall restaurants that turns out to be far more tasteful and charming than it looks from the parking lot. Inside it’s spare, with a lot of pale wood, some judiciously placed red lacquer, a glassed-in kitchen area, and a small sushi bar where Mako and his son prepare some of the best sushi available.

The first time I experienced happiness there, I was sitting at the sushi bar with my friend John. We were chatting intermittently with the man on John’s left, who was a great fan of the head sushi chef, Mako. “He used to be at Gennmai sushi,” the man said, “and before that, he was at what is now Matsuhisa’s on La Cienega.” Then he suggested we try the bonita, two mild, dense parallelograms of a tuna-type fish topped with smelt roe and ginger. Also, he urged us to try the salmon, which is cured on the premises and is very subtle and refreshing.

We also tried tuna that was a deep, translucent red, and melt-in-the mouth barracuda. Then we ate a brown rice tempura vegetable roll. This is a particularly large roll because it contains actual tempura vegetables--fried yam and bean and broccoli--wrapped in seaweed and rice. We found that the brown rice was indeed different from the white rice in that it’s rounder, less sticky and slightly more nutty in flavor. We were just finishing that roll when an irregularly shaped, sputtering piece of fish appeared before us. John had ordered it. “It’s kama ,” he said. “Yellowtail collar. You just dig at it with chopsticks.”

I dug. And every bite was a revelation. I never knew that the neck of a yellowtail could provide such a wide range of flavors and textures. Some of the meat was fluffy, some dark and oily, all of it very rich and delicious.

It was my first moment of happiness at Mako.

And, at the risk of sounding a bit crass, my sense of well-being wasn’t diminished when the bill came. After having eaten as much sushi as we could, our bill was exactly $30, including tea.

The next time happiness hit at Mako Sushi, I was again at the sushi bar, this time with two good girlfriends. Japanese pop songs played on the sound system. Mako was speaking Spanish to one of his customers and slicing up gorgeous sushi and sashimi. We had salmon sashimi that was wrapped in cucumber, an excellent scallop hand roll, and a jazz roll (yellowtail and salmon). When the special vegetable roll was delivered, we had to just sit and stare.

The cross-sections were like tiny, perfectly composed abstract paintings, or like laser photographs of some microscopic, perfect world. We pored over it, heads bumping. “It’s just too beautiful to eat,” said Annie. And then suddenly, we were all smiling and laughing, just from being nourished and pampered and having been given something beautiful to look at.

On another visit to Mako Sushi, I made myself sit away from the sushi bar and try some entrees and noodles. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to describe eating at a table in Mako Sushi as a disappointment, it definitely did not yield the same pleasures that the sushi bar did.

At the table, the service was attentive and yet sporadic: Our waters were eagerly replenished, but food came out of the kitchen in no particular order. My friend Pablo finished off a good miso soup, an ordinary dinner salad, and an excellent teriyaki New York steak a good 15 minutes before the arrival of his father’s chiri dofu , a soup of fish, noodles and tofu.

As late as the soup was, it was exceptional--light and clear and nobly simple. Meanwhile, I worked my way through an array of appetizers: a limp soft-shell crab; some acceptable, if slightly soggy, grilled eggplant; and an assortment of dazzling, delicious sushi.

Pablo had finished so far ahead of us, he became fidgety, so we kept ordering him bowls of green tea ice cream to keep him occupied. And when he didn’t want any more ice cream, he wrote a poem:

The most I love

Is the dessert

Named green tea

It tastes like cold tea

Like ice cream

Mako Sushi

13905 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; (818) 789-1385.

Open for lunch noon to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday to Friday; dinner 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 6:30 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday. Beer and sake. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Parking in lot. Dinner for two, food only, $25 to $50.

Recommended dishes: sushi, $2 to $6.50 per serving.