$40 for four pieces?

WHEN you go out for dinner, you know the evening has been a success if you leave the restaurant happier than when you walked in. Alas, it doesn’t always turn out that way.

The evening started out well. There we were at Tengu Santa Monica, the new outpost of the Westwood Village original. We were seated promptly at a good table in a sleek, airy, stylish dining room, just in front of big picture windows with a view to the ocean. The wait staff couldn’t have been nicer -- or better looking. In fact, the place was filling up with a great looking, stylishly dressed, exuberant yet low-key young crowd. An elegant beige Indian marble sushi bar wrapped around the corner of the room; tables in front of the very cool-looking black wood screen were filling up.

The press release had said that the executive chef/sushi master Shunji Nakao was a protege of Nobu Matsuhisa and had been executive chef at the Hump in Santa Monica, so chances were the sushi would be good.

We ordered drinks -- a flight of three sakes for me, a pineapple-infused sake for my husband, a Japanese bubble gum soda for our kid. The server had just finished raving about the pineapple-infused sake -- her enthusiasm over the whole menu was fun and infectious. She made the daily special ceviche sound so good we ordered that right away, along with a few of the Asian-fusion starters.

Two hours and 20 minutes later (yes, the service was slow), we were paying our check, and our mood was not quite as cheerful as when we had walked in the door. We were $372.44 poorer (OK, The Times was $372.44 poorer), we had consumed a modest amount of mediocre sushi, a few lackluster fusion dishes and a carafe of junmai sake, and we felt like suckers. The ceviche was beautiful, with seafood that was fresh and good -- sweet shrimp (and their fried heads), snow crab and baby octopus -- and slivers of red onion. But the flavor was one-note: citrus. White fish yuzukosho with Bolivian salt was much less interesting than it sounded, five thin slices of halibut with a tiny dot of yuzu paste on each.

Sake-fired garlic sprouts were nicely cooked but not very flavorful, sauteed with scallops and mushrooms. And the presentation and flavors were almost identical to a special we ordered -- the wok-fried spinach and wild mushrooms. Both were served on a round radicchio leaf with a similar sweet brown sauce.

Curiously, not many of the dishes sounded appealing if you weren’t in the mood for jalapeno or other hot chiles. Chiles spiked a jalapeno-miso Chilean sea bass, a lime-yogurt sauce with crispy calamari, a dashi broth with spicy tofu, kanpachi (baby yellowtail) picante, and five of the eight special rolls. Diablo roll had a triple hit of hot, with jalapeno, chili pepper and habanero ponzu accenting the albacore, gobo and cucumber. Yowza! Otherwise many dishes sounded dull: shrimp tempura with warm dashi sauce, pan-seared chicken gyoza with ginger-soy dipping sauce, grilled salmon teriyaki, filet-wrapped asparagus with oyster demi-glaze.

So we ordered some sushi. First ankimo (monkfish liver) sashimi, which was just acceptable, and toro (fatty tuna belly), which was stringy. I asked how the uni (sea urchin) was that day, and the server looked a little scandalized and said that the chef doesn’t offer anything unless it’s great. I ordered it. You could tell by looking at it that it wasn’t the best -- it should be rough-looking as a cat’s tongue -- and it wasn’t very good. Kanpachi sushi was dried out.

Underwhelmed? Yup. The rest of the sushi was fine, if undistinguished. The best dish was probably a huge special roll -- a “red dragon” roll -- with crab, spicy tuna, green bean tempura and scallion.

And it all added up faster than it does at many superior sushi bars. Yikes -- $40 for those four slices of stringy toro? I must have had a horrible expression on my face when I picked up my bill because the server came over to see if there was something wrong. To the restaurant’s credit, the server offered to remove the charge. But the sushi prices are high -- higher even than at Katsuya, the Brentwood hot spot.

We were charged $18 for a dessert of six pieces of mochi ice cream -- the same ones they sell at Whole Foods at $6.99 for eight pieces. Perhaps that was a mistake, because the menu lists eight pieces of combo mochi for $12. We thought we had ordered just one regular-sized order, which the menu says is $6.

Next time, if I feel like taking in the view and the gorgeous room and rubbing elbows with the beautiful people, I’ll grab a seat at the bar (not the sushi bar), order a carafe of jun mai sake and a wacky roll (zen crunch?), sit back and enjoy the show.

brenner@latimes.com

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Tengu Santa Monica

Where: 1541 Ocean Ave., Suite 120, Santa Monica

When: 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays; 5 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays. Full bar. Valet parking.

Price: Appetizers, $4 to $24; sushi and sashimi, $5 to $32 or market price; main courses, $16.50 to $30; desserts, $6 to $22.

Info: (310) 587-2222,

www.tengu.com