Treasure Hunting

Sushi is not as thrilling as it used to bethe novelty is wearing off. To combat this, restaurants around town are installing live sushi bar Web cams, serving sashimi on a conveyor belt, and offering nigiri on plastic-wrapped nude bodies. Raw fish with raw flesh? Great, but sushi doesn't have to be a show. It doesn't have to be enormously expensive, either. Witness Hana on Broadway or any of several spots on Wallingford's sushi row. Wallingford sushi fiends know the definition of a good dinner special: It should be fresh, ample, and affordable. And it doesn't have to have a gimmick.

With fat, fresh pieces and low prices, Kozue is Wallingford's newest secret treasure. Existing on the down lowas Kozue has since it opened in Marchis par for the course when a new restaurant takes over an unassuming spot with a bad reputation. It won't be easy to overcome the bad rap earned by its poor-to-mediocre predecessor, Ai. But Kozue has already developed a devout lunch following, and if it keeps up its remarkable quality-price ratio, a solid dinner crowd won't be far behind.

When chef Shigeki Kajita, a longtime Japanese teacher at the UW's Experimental College, opened Kozue, he had an instant customer base: His students, past and present, who practice their Japanese as they order and eat. Although he opened with an expansive menu that challenged his students and his new clientele, Kajita has since pared it. Probably because business has slowed down since the summer spike, Kozue offers mostly staplesfairly unadventurous nigiri and rolls, tempura, teriyaki, and Japanese fried chicken and pork.

BUT THE QUALITY at Kozue hasn't been pruned. Within moments of sitting down at a table, each diner is plied with a gratis bowl of palate-cleansing, slightly pickly noodles with cucumbers, seaweed, sesame seeds, and vinegar. Nigiri looks and tastes healthy: fat, fleshy, fresh pieces every time. Rolls are voluptuous, too, stuffed with ample portions of meat, plum, cucumber, or avocado. The plump rolls look and taste great, but eating them gracefully is close to impossible. Every day there are five or six gorgeous specials such as rainbow rolls, spider rolls, or salmon tempura rolls. Recently, a salmon tempura roll ($4.95) was delicious: soft and warm inside, lightly battered and fried, and drizzled with wasabi mayonnaise. Nothing gimmicky or fancy, just slightly Westernized sushi, tasty and freshly prepared.

The menu at Kozue these days doesn't include "delicacies" like shrimp head or sea urchinor, on a recent visit, even octopus or scallopsbut sometimes the basics are all a person's looking for, particularly at lunch. Kozue's little golden-hued dining room is lively around noon on a weekday, with tables of one or two slurping broth and munching on tempura, sometimes a chatty regular keeping Kajita company at the sushi bar, and a steady stream of customers ordering lunch specials to go ($7.95 for two main dishes and a California roll).

IN THE summer, when Kozue's attractive bi-level wood deck doubled the restaurant's dining space, dinner was lively, too. These days, dinner crowds are steady but quiet, consisting mostly of regular customers too tired to cook and too smart to pass up Kajita's simple, decently priced fare. Larger groups and those coming from other parts of the city tend to pass up Kozue in favor of perennial favorite Musashi's up the street or flashy neighbor Chinoise. That's just fine with Kozue patrons, who dine peacefully among the ceramic cats and Japanese wall hangings, pleased to keep Kozue a secret for one more day. The exception is Thursday nights, when diners eat to the rhythm of live jazz by local musicians. Kozue is closed on Wednesdays, as jazz-loving Kajita makes time for band practice.

The only thing that's not terrific about Kozue is its dinner service. While the lone lunch waitress/hostess is attentive and friendly, hospitality doesn't seem to be a focus in the eveninga problem for a place that could stand to pull in more dinner customers. The service is alarmingly unevenwhile the servers are generally friendly, they are either forgetful or very easily distracted, too. Water glasses are left unfilled, empty beer bottles go unnoticed, and, on a recent visit, only half of the diners in my party were given the proper plates required to enjoy their meals.

Pity, because one of the most charming aspects of Kozue is its eclectic dishware. Food is served on fish-shaped dishes; drinks are poured in attractive mismatched glasses. Showiness is not on Kajita's agenda. Go for the reliably good food. Or maybe I should tell you not to go at allKozue regulars would be happy to keep their secret under wraps.

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kmillbauer@seattleweekly.com