Has anyone seen Melanie?

The guy in the blinding white suit sitting on a stool outside the doorway wonders if we’re looking for Rika Restaurant. That would be the latest restaurant to move into the Sunset Millennium, where Norman’s is already offering some of the most exotic dining in West Hollywood.

Do you have a reservation, the muscle at the door asks, checking his clipboard. We do. It takes him one glance to find it, indicating there may not be all that many listed.

He puts out his hand and introduces himself.

Have you been here before? Then let me tell you a little bit about it. We’re a Hawaiian-Japanese restaurant, he says, as he walks us toward a glass elevator.

Wait a minute. Hawaiian?

High-end, he repeats, murmuring something about how he’s enjoyed Hawaiian cuisine himself in order to gloss over my clearly naive gaffe. In the elevator, he kindly comments on how very fashionable we’re all looking tonight, a gracious attempt at putting what he perceives as the sartorially challenged at ease. This from someone who’s wearing a Colonel Sanders suit?

We step out of the elevator and he hands us off to a hostess in a long black evening gown. Just before he makes his exit, he murmurs something about the 007 decor as Dame Shirley Bassey circa 1964 belts out the theme to “Goldfinger.”

Rika, named for owner Rika Horie, is quite something. A large outdoor terrace looks out over the Strip and Mel’s Drive-in. The sleek black dining room features floor-to-ceiling windows on that same view. And then there’s the Diamond Lounge, where a couple of “Sex and the City” type babes in black evening dresses and 6-inch heels perch precariously on futuristic-looking white stools. And the bartender waits for somebody -- anybody -- to order a vodka martini, shaken not stirred.

The second-floor location means passersby may not have noticed Rika yet. On Week 2, we certainly have our choice of tables. The black-clad servers outnumber the customers by, say, 10 to 1. And at the sushi bar, half a dozen sushi chefs stand at attention.

First, we’re handed a menu of sushi American style by Tracy Griffith, the first female graduate of the Sushi Academy in Venice, but more pertinently the half-sister of Melanie Griffith. The staff drops her name again. And again.

Is she, by any chance, well, here tonight? Not on a Saturday night? Not the second week the restaurant is open? Oh, I get it. She’s the executive sushi chef.

Well, we have to try some of her sushi rolls. The “Oh, Melanie” arrives reeking of truffle soy sauce, pink soy paper wrapped around salmon tartar with chives and tobiko creme fraiche. But the Antonio roll is something else again: jamon serrano wrapped around foie gras and sliced apple. Perfectly awful -- and $30, which would seem to bear out high-end. Oh, they’ve got a $50 Kobe beef tenderloin, too.

Appetizers include a quite decent sweet shrimp tempura, prepared with heads on. I could do without the spicy gazpacho sauce combed into elaborate patterns with cream. There’s a chilled edamame soup, too, and a couple of salads. A huge bowl of greens with Dungeness crab wasn’t as fresh as it could be, though.

Main courses seemed memorable mostly for the high prices. Bottom line: The best thing we had at Rika, and the most reasonably priced, was straight-ahead sushi from the Japanese sushi chefs. A raw octopus sashimi was excellent, too.

As the evening progressed, the room began to look a little livelier as friends of the owners arrived in a flurry of hugs and kisses along with a few bona-fide diners. Some though, walked in, took one look at the prices and beat a retreat down the glass elevator.

Without a menu posted out front, it’s hard to tell that high-end means prices in the stratosphere.

*

Rika

Where: The Plaza at Sunset Millennium, 8590 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.

When: Dinner nightly, 6 p.m. to midnight. Valet parking $10.

Cost: Sushi and sashimi $6 to $25; American sushi $15 to $30; appetizers $13 to $32; main courses $33 to $50; sushi plates for the table $30 to $75.

Info: (310) 657-9500.