Something Fishy

When Sushi Roku opened on 3rd Street, just around the corner from the Beverly Center, in 1997, it hit the ground running. A tenuous Matsuhisa connection, startling decor and smart management put the hyper-trendy sushi restaurant straight into hundreds of young urbanites’ Palm Pilots. Traffic still snarls up on the street in front as bulging, gold-plated SUVs unload their black-clad tattooed cargo.

Two years later a second location was added in Santa Monica. Now there are three, as Pasadena joins the roster. The site couldn’t be more ideal--in the heart of Old Town off the broad pedestrian-only plaza known as One Colorado.

The designers took a former Christmas warehouse and, with the help of a mountain of pebbles and hand-selected boulders, have turned the cavernous room into a sleek, hard-edged setting. Style suggestion: Wear Japanese designers or black to look your best against the palette of blacks, grays and browns accented with touches of pale bamboo.

With its thronged drinks bar, Sushi Roku Pasadena is the Japanese answer to the ubiquitous P.F. Chang restaurants--glamorous enough for a date, with a slew of fancy cocktails and a bar where you can nosh without committing to dinner. As P.F. Chang has discovered, get that elusive combination just right, and the place will be jammed all night.

The minute you step through the door, the entire staff--from sushi master to bartender to bus person--shouts a welcome in Japanese. It’s a piece of theater, I know, but it makes me perversely want to shout back, especially when they do it again as you’re leaving.

You can choose to sit at the brightly lit sushi bar, at tables grouped around rough-hewn boulders set like sculptures in the far end of the room, or at dark, more secluded banquettes. Black place mats and napkins on the bare tables create a look, but the synthetic fabric of the napkins is slithery to the touch, and they tend to slide off your lap time and again.

The menu follows the same format as at the other two locales: cold or hot appetizers from “the garden” or “the sea” (or “the farm”), salads, dinner entrees, tempura, soup and noodles and, of course, sushi. A one-page list of specials is tucked in every menu, too.

But first, drinks. The wine list is more extensive than those at similar sushi restaurants, though still not all that inspiring. I’d pass up the bland Sapporo or Kirin beers in favor of Roku’s Red Sun brew, a dark, full-bodied ale, which is the only draft and is served in tall glass tumblers. It suits the bold flavors of the food better than any wine or light beer.

If you love clams, start with a bowl of littlenecks steamed in sake. The clams are small and tender, delicious with a slurp of briny miso-enriched broth perfumed with lime. Try the soft-shell crab, too, which is sauteed and served in a competent Champagne beurre blanc strewn with a confetti of sweet yellow peppers and zucchini. Fresh abalone sauteed with Japanese mushrooms and served in the shell is a fine marriage of earth and sea.

Oddly, frying is one of the things Sushi Roku’s kitchen does best, if the rock shrimp popcorn tempura is anything to go by. Then again, another night’s special, spicy tuna and avocado tempura, is awful. It’s hard to tell what you’re eating--canned tuna and green mush? I can only surmise it must be a way of using up tuna that’s no longer pristine enough to use as sushi.

Move on to seared Japanese peppers the size of jalapenos. I love them when they’re grilled just enough to char and shrivel the skin. These are limp, though, because they’re splashed with a light ponzu. Even so, they’re one of the best items. Another good, if unadventurous, choice is the free-range chicken yakitori, a skewer of moist white-meat chicken sprinkled with sesame seeds. “New-style” Chinese chicken salad is a Chinois knockoff. It’s made with fresh greens cut into fettuccine-wide strips, lots of moist chicken and peanuts tossed in a punchy mustard dressing. It’s not Puck’s, but it is appealing in its own way. Salmon skin salad, on the other hand, is made with tired salmon skin. It tastes fishy, and it’s not crisp. Its yuzu vinaigrette has a sweet edge. In fact, almost all of the dressings and sauces are sweet.

I can see the problem here. To serve large portions at appealing prices, the kitchen is cutting corners on the raw materials, disguising any lack of flavor or freshness with the blatant sweet sauces that everyone seems to crave. Take the grilled “live” Santa Barbara sweet shrimp, for example. I don’t know when these were last alive, but these are not anywhere as phenomenally sweet as those of shrimp steamed or grilled live. They’re not what they should be. When I pull a khaki-colored shiso leaf from one of the plates, that says it all. When have you ever seen shiso that was anything but emerald green?

Ordering sashimi here may not be the best idea. In fact, over several visits, the straight raw fish and classic nigiri-zushi are the restaurant’s weak points. Either the fish isn’t as fresh as it should be (I’m even thinking frozen in some cases) or it’s a much lower quality than the best sushi bars serve, because it simply doesn’t have much flavor. And often the texture is oddly soft, like the amberjack we ordered one night. To be fair, when one of my party complained to our waiter, the manager said he’d speak to his “sushi man” and took it off the bill. I never got the chance to try the prime bluefin toro, as the sushi bar was out of it by the time I ordered. That could be a good sign--that they order only enough for the night. Yet a look around the room tells me the most popular item is the assorted sushi served in a round lacquered tray. I wouldn’t recommend it.

The original Sushi Roku had flair and focus at the beginning. Here, in this third location, the menu is like a watercolor painted on wet paper. The focus of the dishes is blurred and the quality of the ingredients has slipped as the kitchen plays to a larger and much younger crowd. Still, the room is handsome, the ale is cold, and there are enough good dishes on the menu to give Sushi Roku Pasadena a try if you’re in the area. Just don’t drive out of your way. This is anything but a destination restaurant.

Sushi Roku Pasadena

33 Miller Alley

Pasadena

(626) 683-3000

Cuisine: Japanese

Rating: *

AMBIENCE: Loft-like space with stone decor, sushi bar and terrace that opens onto pedestrian plaza. SERVICE: Cheerful and fast. BEST DISHES: Clams steamed in sake, rock shrimp tempura, Chinese chicken salad, chicken yakitori, Japanese peppers. Appetizers, $3 to $13. Main courses and specialties, $13 to $27. Sushi (per pair), $4 to $15. Corkage, $9. DRINK PICK: Red Sun ale. FACTS: Dinner daily. Lunch weekdays. Valet parking on Union Street off Delacey Street. Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.