RESTAURANT REVIEW / JURO’CHO-SUSHI : Prize Catch : Although its location is not distinguished, its sparkling, mouth-watering cuisine is.

It’s a little hard to find as you drive by, even if you’re looking for it.

Down on Seaward Avenue in Ventura, about a block from the ocean, the tiny place is buried in an undistinguished retail office complex, next to a liquor store. When you finally do locate this hidden spot, and then make it to the door, you find yourself in the intimate setting that is Juro’Cho-Sushi.

If its location is not distinguished, its cuisine certainly is.

The intimate environment here, which owner-chef George Lee has created over the past eight years, seems to lend itself to the sparkling, mouth-watering sushi that crosses the sushi bar. A few small tables occupy the back of the place, whose total capacity probably doesn’t exceed a couple of dozen. Sushi bar seating is on a long wood bench. One wall is covered with personalized wood sake cups, each bearing the names of their habitual users. Juro’Cho-Sushi is a real neighborhood place, usually filled with locals and so small in its capacities that occasionally the sushi chef has to wait for the rice supply--warm and sticky--to catch up with his flashing knife.

But it’s also a family place, with Lee’s spouse, Tomi, there much of the time, and his mother, Maggie Lee, usually working a grill that is tucked away at one end of the bar.

An eye-opening exception to the down-home Japanese feeling--it’s really Okinawan, since Lee was born and reared on that island--is the Anglo sushi chef who serves as Lee’s backup. An Anglo sushi chef?

You bet. This one is Jack Bucher, whose sushi, after training with Lee, is just as good as his mentor’s. Bucher, incongruously, happens to have more than a decade of training in both nouvelle and classical French cuisine.

The food is simply the best of its sort in the region. This claim is made in the knowledge that, upon the faces of true sushi lovers around here, eyebrows will be raised.

It goes without saying that the fish is impeccably fresh. The halibut is usually local, the salmon Norwegian or Californian, a recent bluefin tuna flown in from the East Coast.

Sushi is the star here, though it does receive competition from some very handsome blackboard specials. My own blackboard favorite is the yellowtail collar, a richer section of meat taken from beneath the head ($6.95), cooked very gently in a covered pan and basted with the house teriyaki sauce. There are only two of these rich parts to a fish, and regular customers know they should call ahead and have one or two put aside.

The Hanalei roll ($6) is wrapped in seaweed and deep-fried briefly in a light tempura batter. Inside is salmon, red onion, yellowtail, tuna and avocado. It may be the onion that gives that lovely crunch.

The Alaska roll ($3.25) is a spicy one, with rice and sesame seeds on the outside, and red onion, avocado and salmon inside. The uniqueness of this--which may not be for the timid--is the Balinese chile sauce in it. It really does the job, firing things up with even more heat than wasabi .

The same sauce comes on a dish not on the menu but usually available: a hand roll of raw scallops ($2.50) from the East Coast, held together by the seaweed and sprinkled with the Balinese chile sauce. It’s a dish in which the lusciousness of the scallops and the zing of the sauce make for a very effective combination.

A Juro’Cho dish winning more than honorable mention is the Shellfish Delight ($6.50), a hot casserole and a small meal in itself. In the dish are hunks of giant clam, scallops and mushrooms, lightly done in the hosue sauce made of reduced eel sauce, butter and mayonnaise. Crab is scattered over the dish.

Choosing just one dish here would be difficult. But if I had to do so, that would be the hot and cold sashimi ($6). This beautiful, succulent hunk of raw bluefin tuna is seared on the grill for just moments, with a touch of butter, then lathered with a sauce that strikes me as sweet saki and soy and perhaps some rice vinegar; it is served with a touch of Mexican-like salsa on top. You’ve heard about dishes that melt in your mouth? This one qualifies. As you lift a bite to your mouth, you’ve got the aroma of the slightly charred fish, and then the taste of the sauce, the salsa and the fish merge.

And it’s hard to forget the Juro’Cho roll ($6). This model is really three small rolls tucked together to form a larger one. There’s a salmon segment, a crab portion and an eel hunk, each surrounded by seaweed and then tucked within rice.

I could go on. But better that you get there.

WHERE AND WHEN

Juro’Cho-Sushi, 1054 Seaward Ave., Ventura, 652-0382. Open for lunch, Tuesday-Friday 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., for dinner Monday-Saturday 5:30-9:30 p.m. Major credit cards accepted, beer and wine served. Lunch or dinner for two, food only $15-$30.