Sushi, illuminated

AT 7 on a weeknight, Katsuya, the new sushi restaurant on San Vicente in Brentwood, is rocking. And, if you’re seated at a table up front, the people-watching is definitely sushi grade. A big fish throws a hissy fit when he can’t get the table he has in mind.

Brentwood couples arrive, children in tow, for an expensive night of noshing. Watch a quartet of blonds with identical haircuts slyly check out each others’ outfits and shoes before sitting down for a good gossip and some of the chef’s famous spicy tuna on crispy rice.

Weeknight, weekend, Brentwood is lining up for the privilege of spending close to $100 a head at this glamorous new venue. Maybe not everybody spends that amount, but I certainly did each time I went to Katsuya.

Half a block up from Whole Foods and an international newsstand, two fire-breathing stones stand sentinel at either side of Katsuya’s entrance. The restaurant is named for Katsuya Uechi, the sushi chef behind the popular Katsu-ya in Studio City who has been tapped by SBE Entertainment Group to headline this and a proposed series of Katsuyas around the country.

Every spot at the sushi bar, beneath a giant illuminated photo of a geisha’s seductive eyes, is taken. Owners and investors crowd the white leather booth beside the small drinks bar, and across the room at another booth, a junior agent puts the moves on a bored fashionista. She’s heard better.

Around the corner in the mirrored lounge, it’s a sake and martini fest replete with extravagant sushi rolls. The unsettling photo on the lounge wall is the tattoo worn by the same deconstructed Japanese woman whose lips and eyes decorate the restaurant to bold and brilliant effect.

It’s a scene, all right. And to ensure that nobody driving by misses it, French designer fantastique Philippe Starck has opened the front of the restaurant to the sidewalk so that the beautiful young women playing footsie with their dates or indolently dipping sushi into their soy sauce telegraph Katsuya’s sex appeal.

Drive by slowly enough, and you can take in the groups seated on dainty white chairs gathered around the white two-seater sofas, center stage. But good luck securing one. Call up and ask to reserve a sofa, and they’ll say you can’t, and when you arrive and ask for that empty one, they’ll say it’s reserved.

Starck has more than delivered with an eye-catching design based on the clean, simple lines of a bento box. He has his bits of fantasy in those giant blown-up photos and other touches like the primitive-looking gold objects/artifacts in rows on shelves beside the sushi bar, which turn out to be water guns sprayed gold. He likes the shape.

Sharing is best

YOUR server will explain that Katsuya has three kitchens -- the sushi bar, the robata kitchen where chefs in black kerchiefs grill over Japanese charcoal at an alarming 1,600 degrees, and the hot kitchen in back. And that it’s best to share dishes because everything comes out as soon as it’s ready, in no particular order. OK, got that.

And that if you have trouble figuring out how much to order, he or she will help you. And the server does, enthusiastically recommending the most popular dishes, those that fans of the original Katsu-ya in Studio City can recite by heart.

Sushi dressed up with hot chiles, crispy onions and splashes of ponzu is a phenomenon launched by Nobu Matsuhisa at Matsuhisa way back in the ‘80s. His style has influenced almost every sushi chef in L.A., certainly the ones intent on capturing the trendy crowd that dines often and expensively. Katsuya is no exception.

One of Katsuya’s best-known dishes is seared albacore covered with wiry, fried onion threads and sunk in a lake of ponzu. For me, though, the charred sweetness of the onions and the oversaucing interfere with the delicate taste of the albacore. And I’m not really a fan of the spicy tuna on crispy rice, in which the raw tuna is reduced to a paste.

Seared tuna with Japanese salsa has a nice blast of heat, but it too is drowned in soy. In general, these sorts of dishes are overseasoned and salty.

Seaweed salad makes a pretty plate with several kinds of seaweed scattered with sesame seeds and marigold petals -- and doused in soy sauce. Stuffed eggplant is filled with cubed eggplant mixed with a miso so sweet, the result is almost eggplant candy.

Scallops with kiwi slices is an inspired match. The pale green fruit lends a cool, refreshing note.

Curiously, the cooked food is far better than the straight-ahead sushi. Japanese-style bouillabaisse is a cast iron pot of spicy, red-tinged broth with shrimp, clams, chunks of fish and half-moons of pink-edged fish cake along with fat, slithery udon noodles.

The server delivers it with the appropriate number of bowls and a black lacquer spoon to serve it up. Our group polishes off every bit. Another lidded casserole holds shrimp with asparagus and shiitake in a broth enriched with butter. No wonder it tastes so rich. And salmon grilled on a cedar board is lightly smoked, delicate and lovely.

Vegetarians can order quite a good meal, picking a little from various categories. The sushi roll list includes a vegetarian option, and the robata kitchen grills shiitake mushrooms, potatoes or other vegetables over that hardwood fire.

Let ‘em roll

SUSHI rolls are baroque combinations of ingredients, and I see flight after flight sail out of the sushi bar. We try the Katsuya roll, five or six kinds of fish rolled up in rice, and an outer layer of raw cucumber slices held in place with a toothpick. The minute you pull it out, the whole thing falls apart.

No matter, this is one of the better rolls, because it’s not so overwhelmed with competing flavors and ingredients.

The straight sushi and sashimi, though, is mediocre on three visits. It doesn’t take a connoisseur to tell the difference. A teenage son of one of my guests stopped by our table to say hello, took a bite of sushi and pronounced it not very good.

The quality of the fish just doesn’t measure up against that of the better traditional sushi restaurants around town. Katsuya’s kitchen doctors the seafood with so much ponzu, hot chile and other stuff, you wouldn’t be able to detect the quality anyway.

The wine list has ambitions, offering half a dozen sparkling wines, including Cristal at $550 a bottle. There’s also a sparkling sake called Poochi-Poochi that cries out to be ordered just for the fun of saying the name. White wines include Pinot Grigio and an Albarino, which actually goes very well with sushi, while reds are more conservative.

As for cocktails, a white peach Bellini is described as being sushi’s best friend. I wouldn’t count on it. Better to move directly to the sake selections, which cover a variety of styles.

If the sushi is disappointing, the scene certainly delivers. Where else in Brentwood can you find such a festive atmosphere, week in, week out?

While it doesn’t quite have the pizazz of Hollywood spots such as Geisha House and certainly not the focus and purity of Yotsuya or Sushi Mori, for a certain crowd -- and you know who you are -- Katsuya is it. For now.

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virbila@latimes.com

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Katsuya

Rating: *

Location: 11777 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood; (310) 207-8744; sbeent.com/katsuya/.

Ambience: A Brentwood crowd revels in spicy tuna and sushi from Katsuya Uechi at this new and hyper-stylish sushi restaurant designed by the prolific Philippe Starck. A lounge offers cocktails and sushi noshing too.

Service: Enthusiastic and endearing.

Price: Dinner, hot and cold dishes, $10 to $23; main courses, $16 to $38; robata, $3 to $18; sashimi, $13 to $19; desserts, $6 to $8.

Best dishes: Seaweed salad, scallops with kiwi in yuzu vinaigrette, Japanese-style bouillabaisse, shrimp with asparagus and shiitake (Japanese mushroom, asparagus and shrimp tobanyaki), Katsuya roll.

Wine list: Not many bottles really go with the food, but a nice list of sakes. Corkage, $20.

Best table: One of the two-seater sofas with chairs gathered around, for five or more.

Details: Open for lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; for dinner Monday through Thursday from 5:30 to 11 p.m., Friday from 5:30 p.m. to midnight, Saturday from 4 p.m. to midnight, Sunday from 4 to 11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking, $5.

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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.