In the Mood for Sushi

It’s Sunday evening, just after the Super Bowl, and Sushi Hirosuke is only half full. In 30 minutes, though, there won’t be an empty table in the house, or a prayer of being seated any time soon at the long, L-shaped sushi bar.

Ventura Boulevard has sushi joints at nearly every major intersection, but few match up well against this place. Its affable chefs create a mood totally different from that you find at, say, Sushi Nozawa, where you wouldn’t dare look the sushi master in the eye. And industry pretensions are kept to a minimum. The obligatory 8 x 12 glossies on the wall are of celebrities you probably won’t recognize.

But the quality of the fish is unassailable. And this is one Japanese restaurant that is at pains to describe everything in English, both on the blackboard (where many of the best dishes are listed) and on the menu.

It’s a good idea to put yourself in the hands of one of the chefs. The last time I did, I was rewarded with butter-soft albacore and tremendously sweet yellowtail sushi and a terrific salmon hand roll in a sweet, spicy sauce.

One of the most delicious menu items is a spider roll: deep-fried soft-shell crab enclosing a layer of rice and a center of diced cucumber, asparagus, burdock root and pungent radish sprouts. From the blackboard, you might try ankimo, the creamy monkfish liver often referred to as Japanese foie gras.

I like some of the cooked dishes, too, such as salted green soy beans boiled in the pod--they’re great with Japanese beer. Asari sakamushi is a dish of littleneck clams steamed in a rich sake broth, as fresh-tasting as if they’d been plucked from the sea that very morning.

But not all the cooked dishes are to my liking, or even vaguely Japanese. I couldn’t resist ordering something called volcano, and I won’t again. It’s a large sea shell filled with crab meat, scallops, asparagus, mushrooms and mayonnaise, topped with flying fish roe and then baked. I found the texture mushy, the tastes muddled.

The non-seafood dishes are surprisingly good. Beef teriyaki is broiled strips of ultra-tender beef brushed with a subtly sweet teriyaki sauce. Mushroom delight is made with oyster mushrooms (shimeji) broiled in butter and soy with a few broccoli florets and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Everyone seated at the sushi bar gets oranges for dessert, and for those with a sweet tooth, there’s ice cream wrapped in rice paste and deep-fried. My advice is to come early . . . well before Super Sunday rolls around again.

BE THERE

Sushi Hirosuke, 17237 Ventura Blvd., Encino. (818) 788-7548. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday, dinner 5-9:30 p.m. Monday-Tuesday, 5-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 5-9 p.m. Sunday. Closed Wednesday. Parking in rear. Beer and wine only.

Suggested dishes: albacore sushi, $3.80; spider roll, $7.80; ankimo, $7.80; beef teriyaki, $6.80.