Sushi Supreme

Omino Sushi is a strong candidate for best Japanese restaurant in the northwest Valley, but I suggest giving it another title: hand roll capital of the Southland.

Before I describe the goings-on behind the counter at this crowded, sweetly ramshackle place, I should mention that serious sushi chefs do not so much take pride in hand rolls as tolerate them. Hand rolls are an American innovation (although, much to the chagrin of Japanese food purists, they are beginning to catch on as a food trend in Japan).

For the record, hand rolls are long cylinders of sushi rice generally stuffed with multi-ingredient fillings and served cut into bite-sized, scallop-shaped pieces. Popular versions are made with eel, salmon skin and spicy tuna, not to mention the notorious California roll, which is rice rolled around a filling of avocado, crab meat and mayonnaise.

On weekends, people line up outside Omino Sushi’s door. Not because it’s a fancy place--you sit at an L-shaped counter, one of the ordinary tables or at a grand piano(!), which serves as a communal table--though one nice touch, beautiful flowers on all tables, does suggest an uncompromising attitude about freshness. All the seafood is good and one of the menu blackboards states that prize catches like premium yellowtail are sometimes flown in from Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji fish market.

Stick to those blackboard menus when you order. (The printed menu is dominated by teriyaki, sukiyaki and similar Western-inspired fare.) One board is reserved for appetizers, another for daily specials and a third for the hand rolls.

A few in my party were fascinated by the prospect of a crunch roll, and it wasn’t half bad, either. The outside of the roll is coated in a mixture of fried bread crumbs and tiny smelt eggs (masago) that pop on your teeth like bubble wrap. The filling is crab meat, radish sprouts and asparagus. The roll rests on a few dabs of Russian dressing, a misstep, in my view, because the dressing makes the whole thing overly rich.

Rainbow roll takes its name from the contrasting colors of salmon and yellowtail woven skillfully on the outside of the rice roll. The delicious salmon skin roll is rice rolled up with nori seaweed, crackling pieces of deep-fried salmon skin, radish sprouts and a soy dressing. Something called tiger eye is cooked squid rolled around cooked salmon, a hand roll, yes, but technically not sushi because it contains no rice.

When you’ve reached your hand roll saturation point, there are several fine cooked dishes and even a few dazzlers lurking in a back kitchen. The deep-fried soft-shell crab is a great, though brief, pleasure--one or two bites and the crab is just a memory. The outrageously good broiled swordfish teriyaki melts in the mouth, and a sake-marinated chunk of butterfish will have you calling out for seconds.

Ankimo, often referred to as Japanese foie gras, comes as four rounds of creamy pink monkfish liver lightly dusted with sesame and garnished with mozuku seaweed. Rock shrimp tempura is such a good idea I wonder why I haven’t seen it in other local Japanese restaurants. The delicately battered shrimp remind me of Cajun popcorn, minus the hot pepper kick.

Even everyday Japanese dishes seem to have been made with care here. One example is gyoza dumplings, similar to Chinese pot stickers--a dense mixture of minced pork and leeks enclosed in a delicate pasta wrapping. They taste as if they were made just minutes before arriving at the table.

You’ll need a bit of patience to fully savor a meal here. The kitchen can be slow at peak hours, and service is performed by a crew whose English language skills are shaky at best. Even if you pronounce these dishes in perfect Japanese, it may not be a help. Many of the waitresses are from Taiwan, a typical Southland anomaly in a restaurant where the cooking is unapologetically Japanese.

BE THERE

Omino Sushi, 20957 Devonshire St., Chatsworth. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Mon.-Fri.; dinner 5:30-10 p.m. Mon.-Thur., 5:30-10:30 p.m. Fri., 5-10 p.m. Sat.; closed Sun. Dinner for two, $25-$43. Beer and wine only. MasterCard and Visa accepted. (818) 709-8822.