DINING REVIEW: Roll call at Fujiyama

Walk into Fujiyama's stylish new downtown location and you walk into a showroom of American sushi.

The restaurant, a few doors north of Fujiyama's old address, is big, hip and an instant hit with diners.

A granite bar at the front gleams under tastefully dim lights. Beyond, a sleek dining room is lined with sizzling Teppanyaki tables and a mock forest of bamboo on one side, and the bold, simple prints of Katsushika Hokusai on the other. At the back, a line of chefs slice and dice at a brightly lit sushi bar. The blend of light and dark splashed on different areas gives the place the feel of a narrow street market at night. And the throngs of diners, both at lunch and dinner, make it feel like a busy one.

From my seat at the sushi bar on a recent night, I watched servers return again and again for big, ornate platters of sushi rolls with multi-colored layers of fish tumbled together and drizzled in a sweet, rich sauce.

Most rolls here boast goofy, sometimes bawdy names such as the Who's your Daddy?; the Viagra; and the Screaming Orgasm. Many shun tradition. The filling of the Cowboy ($10) is "beef and only beef." The Heart Attack roll ($10) wraps spicy tuna, jalapeños and cream cheese in rice and sheets of seaweed, then the whole enchilada is deep-fried.

The dragon roll ($20) takes an already-crowded roll of deep-fried shrimp, fake crab and baked salmon skin, and drapes it with a whole eel and a sweet sauce.

This is American sushi.

It's big. It's bold. It's a little bit gaudy. It has about as much in common with the Japanese stuff as a Honda Civic has with a pimped out Cadillac Escalade.

And so what? This is a country that likes to do things its own way. (Or, more accurately, if you're going to make it in the sushi biz here, you better appeal to the corn-fed American palate.)

The American stuff tends to rank quantity over quality. I rarely saw plates of plain sushi, where a simple, diminutive slice of raw fish takes center stage, leave the sushi bar.
Instead, filling rolls, rich on rice and stuffed with fried shrimp and imitation crab, make the foundation of Fujiyama's business.

It's amazing to see a cuisine evolve so quickly. Mainstream America started eating sushi only about 20 years ago. Back then, the most exotic thing on the menu was the spartan California roll.

Then, we applied the same "How can I make this worse for me?" know-how that gave us the guacamole-bacon double cheeseburger with super-size fries. And voila! Now roll-crazy menus like Fujiama's are the norm.

At Fujiyama's bar, I ordered Lion King (fried shrimp and cucumber topped with avocado and a nest of shredded imitation crab and fish roe, $10) and a Something Wrong 69 (fried shrimp and fried soft-shell crab rolled and draped with a rainbow of red tuna, orange salmon and alabaster yellowtail, then covered in a spicy sauce, $14.50).

Both were tasty, and went well with wasabi-laced soy sauce. Despite the crowd of ingredients, each piece was bite-size - an increasingly rare thing.

Next came a flight of traditional nigiri: slivers of salmon, tuna, yellowtail and red snapper perched on pedestals of rice ($4-$5 for two pieces). It, too, was bite-size and good. The fish lacked that transcendent flavor of excellent fish, but it was fresh and well-cut.

A few things disappoint. The swatches of kelp swirling in the miso soup had a sliminess suggesting they had been swimming in the broth too long.

The grilled chicken skewers making up the yakitori ($4) lacked that lovely, crisp char you expect, and shared their skewers with slices of green pepper that made them taste more like backyard shish kabob than a classic Japanese bar food.

No one who loves elaborate rolls, though, will leave Fujiama disappointed or hungry. The service is attentive. The setting is cool, and the full bar makes it an attractive place for a weekend night out.

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Contact the writer: nathaniel.glen@gazette.com


DETAILS
Fujiyama Japanese Cuisine and Sushi Bar

*** (On a roll)

Address: 22 S. Tejon St. Suite A
Contact: 630-1167, fujiyamasushi.com
Entrees: $7-$20
Hours: Lunch, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; Dinner,
5 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Closed Sundays.
Vegetarian: Yes
Liquor: Full bar
Plastic: Yes