RESTAURANT REVIEW : Cafe Sushi: Something for Everyone

There are two distinctly different dining experiences to be had at Cafe Sushi: the sushi bar and the dining room.

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The small, pine-paneled Japanese restaurant is popular and often crowded. As the night progresses, the number of backward baseball hats increases, as do tattoos and pencil-thin young women. By 9:30 or so, seniority belongs to the hip 40-somethings.

The dining room is a series of booths and small tables divided by glass partitions etched with turtles, bat skates and shrimp. Once seated, you are handed a one-page laminated menu, a long printed sushi menu onto which the waitress will write your order, and another laminated board on which there’s a pictorial display of house specialties, including such delicacies as the Tiger’s Eye, a roll of salmon and squid and avocado and gobo root in a tube of boiled calamari that somehow manages to approximate the precise taste and texture of a rubbery hard-boiled egg.

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Sitting at one of the tables is a more insular and typical restaurant experience, and, as Japanese cafe experiences go, unremarkable. You order from good-natured young waiters and waitresses who do not even pretend to be sushi or Japanese food experts. (Once, after a discussion with the waitress about the sukiyaki, I order it and she brings me teriyaki instead.) Pork gyoza , Japanese dumplings, are just fine. Tempura is heavily battered and greasy.

The waitress warns me that the sukiyaki, a cast-iron kettle of glass noodles, bamboo shoots, enoki mushrooms and chicken chunks, suffers from a sugary broth and, when I eventually do get the dish, I find she’s absolutely right.

But a combination of broiled fish includes a very generous portion of tuna, whitefish, shrimp and scallops--the five plump, minimally cooked scallops alone are worth the price of dinner. Typically, the dinner comes with a Thousand Island-dressed mixed green salad.

Things are really much more fun and vital at the sushi bar.

It’s not even that the sushi bar is that great; in fact, it’s pretty workman-like. The first thing I notice is how worn the sushi planks are: They’ve obviously been used thousands of times. While some sushi bars make a point of collecting stunning bits and pieces of ceramics and lacquerware, Cafe Sushi’s tableware collection is modest and a bit battered.

But this place does volume business: Five or six chefs, some of them notably handsome, work the bar at dinner. It’s a good place for anyone intimidated by sushi protocol, or fearful of mispronouncing Japanese terms.

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On the other hand, the mystique of sushi takes a beating here: One sees uniform lengths of crab shaken out of plastic bags. Oysters are pre-shucked. Monkfish liver comes out of an aluminum tube. Such disillusionments aside, there’s a reason why this place is popular. The fish for the most part is nicely cut and tastes fresh. The chefs are attentive.

A salmon roll holds a lot of hot, crackly salmon and sweet, adorably crunchy gobo root. Spanish mackerel, topped with a pretty snarl of scallions, is juicy with a vinegary sauce. Monkfish liver looks like a 50-50 bar, a pretty swirl of orange and white held on rice by a seaweed wrapper. At its best, monkfish liver tastes like great foie gras ; Cafe Sushi’s tastes like a pleasant, very mild pate .

I expected the tempura tuna to be like the tempura shrimp roll, a piece of fried seafood in a rice-and-seaweed wrapper, but in this case, the whole roll has been battered and fried, then sliced and served in a soy-flavored broth so that both the interior tuna and avocado are piping hot--it’s really quite good.

At this sushi bar, it’s best to stick with old standbys: tuna, yellowfish, salmon and so forth. Bonito isn’t available and when we order sea bass, the sushi chef says, “No! Halibut!” as if the two were interchangeable. Some of the house specialty rolls are a little over the top; the Deacon roll, named for a customer, is made with both tuna and yellowtail and winds up being the biggest, fattest roll I’ve ever seen.

The only downside of sitting at the sushi bar is that you are virtually ignored by the wait staff--and they control the much-desired water pitcher.

* Cafe Sushi, 8459 Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 651-4020. Lunch and dinner seven days. Beer, wine and sake. Major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $24-$50.