Sushi Bar

The woman sat down with her friend opposite the pale wood sushi bar and fingered Tokyo Sushi's menu tentatively. She watched the young sushi chef deftly cutting seaweed-wrapped rolls into beautiful rice-filled rounds and then asked her waitress for advice. "I've never tried sushi before, so I want to start out slowly. What would be good?"I resisted the impulse to pull up a chair and offer my help. But after sampling the sushi at this Glen Burnie restaurant, here's what I would suggest.Start with a generous slice of buttery-firm salmon pressed into sushi rice.

Not that we'd want to be a name-dropper. But, after folks scoped out the Hippodrome's totally fab face-lift, last week's big Opening Night Gala was all about checking out who was there. Take a deep breath and dive in. Wally and Mary Ann Pinkard, Betsy Compton and Eric Grubman, Clair Zamoiski and Tommy Segal, Amy Elias, Richie Pearlstone, David Nelson, Leslie Shepard, Sue Cohen, Donald Hicken, Lynn and Tony Deering, Bill Struever, Bill Jews, Jon Kaplan, James Piper Bond, Ellen and Buddy Zamoiski, Terry and Martha Perl, John Pearson, Tom Wilcox, Paul and Dorothy Wolman, Patrick Kerins, Rebecca Hoffberger, Jonna and Fred Lazarus, Suzy Dunn, Jan and Larry Rivitz, Sarah and Steve Eisner, Jay and Sharon Smith, Henry Rosenberg Jr., Peggy and Don Hutchinson, Carey Deeley, Peter Angelos, Carole and Bean Sibel, Theo and Blanche Rodgers, Suzin Garabedian, Father Hap Ridley, Nanny Warren, Mary Kay and Chuck Nabit, Brian Lawrence, Karen Bokram, Michelle Whelley, Connie Caplan, Ellen Small and Jim Dale, P.J. Mitchell, Adrian Harpool, Margaret and Dick Himmelfarb, Sandy Apgar and son Clayton, Cindy Conklin and Bob Merbler.

John Steven Ltd., 1800 Thames St., (410) 327-5561. Open every day for lunch and dinner. MC, V. No-smoking area: no. Wheelchair access: no.Charles Doering was getting ready to open a bar on Thames Street some 15 years ago, but he couldn't decide on a name. Then his 5-year-old son suggested they call it John Steven, after his teddy bear. Doering liked the idea, and the rest is Fells Point history.John Steven Ltd. is one of the area's most popular bars, but it isn't known for its food because it's never served much.

Sushi Sono, the new restaurant and sushi bar in Columbia, has good Japanese food, no better and certainly no worse than most of Baltimore's Japanese restaurants. So why is it worth making the trip from Baltimore to Columbia to eat there? I can tell you in one word. Well, two.The view.Sushi Sono is right on the lake, very near Clyde's and the Tomato Palace. But those are restaurants where a lot is happening. At Sushi Sono you can sit very quietly in the serene blond-wood dining room and contemplate the water, the branch of a pine tree, a family of ducks floating calmly by.And, of course, enjoy food like Sushi Sono's spicy crab roll.

I heard a savvy guy from West Baltimore say: "What difference does this Larry Young thing really make to most people? Most people measure a politician by what they see and feel when they walk to the end of the front walk. 'What's the quality of life on my street?' That's it."But that's not it. That's not all there is. Even in this cynical, scandal-weary, get-mine-and-get-over society we're living in, we can't let go of things that keep a democracy healthy - integrity, honesty, fairness, wisdom, leadership.

No doubt, all your experiences at the Motor Vehicle Administration are swift and satisfactory. The lines are always short and you always accomplish what you set out to do. But let's imagine, just for the sake of argument, that you had to wait longer than anticipated, or that you didn't bring the right scrap of paper and now you have to come back another day. You just might leave the MVA feeling a mite tense. If you happened to go to the MVA in Columbia, in a small shopping center off Dobbin Road, a wonderful antidote for the stress you may be feeling is right next door.

Sushi Sakura occupies the Pikesville location where Fortune House Chinese restaurant was for a short time. Before that, it was a forward-looking and ambitious Chinese restaurant named Try's Asian Fusion that I admired but never went back to after I reviewed it. I had, in fact, come to review Fortune House a few months ago, but it was "closed for painting." Fortune House, it turned out, was being converted into Sushi Sakura, a perfectly nice Japanese restaurant that I didn't take to at all, in spite of the fact that the food it serves is comparable to what I've enjoyed in similar restaurants for years.

Have you noticed how new Little Italy restaurants are less traditional than the old ones? Milan (1000 Eastern Ave.,410-685-6111, OneMilan.com), which opened a couple of weeks ago where Luigi Petti was, advertises itself on the edge of Little Italy and Harbor East, so it's clearly trying to appeal to two separate audiences. The new Italian-slash-Mediterranean restaurant is a far cry from the comfortable, family-owned southern Italian places that used to be the standard for Little Italy.

Restaurants are luring families in on Father's Day with cigars and golf bags and by dry-aging anything that's not nailed down. Here are some Father's Day dining options around town: RA Sushi is offering an all-day "manly-sized" happy hour menu selection on Father's Day, 11 a.m. to close, featuring more than 30 sushi, appetizer, and tapas items ranging from $2.75 to $7.75, plus a wide variety of beer, wine, sake, and signature cocktails ranging...