Sushi

Compared to the endless assortments of sandwiches, burgers and fries you find at most lunch spots, good sushi can seem like a vacation. Baltimore is blessed with enough serious sushi places that you don't need to go far to get away. If you're in Federal Hill, one of the best options is Matsuri, right next to Cross Street Market. 12:02 The street level dining area is small, bordering on cramped, and the apparently random accumulation of decorations makes it feel more so. The upper-level dining room can seat larger groups and private parties of up to 50. Our corner window table gave us good light and placed us at eye level with a small school of goldfish.

There's something spare and clean about Japanese food that makes it seem the perfect choice for a hot summer night. Vinegar-dressed rice around morsels of fresh fish. The bite of wasabi. The crunch of tempura.Even the decor at most Japanese restaurants is cool and streamlined. At Jpn., with its blond-wood partitions and rice-paper lamps, this minimalist sensibility is carried even further, right down to the Charles Street restaurant's abbreviated name. Pronounced Japan by the staff, the restaurant operated as Shogun from 1983 until last September, when one of three partners left.

I'm still wrestling with the concept of ordering a smoked salmon pizza in one of Baltimore County's best Japanese restaurants, but I can come to terms with it because San Sushi's new chef produces such a fine smoked salmon pizza. A little background is in order. A few months ago, San Sushi in Cockeysville, the restaurant that spawned the estimable San Sushi Too and Thai One On in Towson, brought in a new chef, Paulie Choonhawongse. His background is in Western haute cuisine, not Japanese food, so he produces five or six specials -- usually fusion dishes -- that are listed on a blackboard near the front of the restaurant.

After Kawasaki on Charles Street closed three years ago when its owners pleaded guilty to hiring illegal workers, the building was bought by the owner of the popular Joss Cafe & Sushi Bar in Annapolis. Renovations were clearly under way, but nothing happened until a couple of weeks ago when the Baltimore branch of Joss (413 N. Charles St., Mount Vernon, 410-244-6988) quietly opened. Heather Lee, general manager of both locations, said the Baltimore menu is a little different, with more of a focus on sushi, fewer Japanese entrees and more small plates.

A cafeteria-style kosher restaurant in the heart of Pikesville seems like a can't-miss concept. Cafe 921, which opened two weeks before Passover in the cavernous former site of the Pikes movie theater, has a nice variety of food. There's a salad bar, hot entrees, brick oven-baked pizzas and even a sushi bar. Of course, there's no meat, which by kosher law can't be served with dairy products, and no shellfish, which is also forbidden. All food meets high standards of kosher certification.

The sign above the sushi and Chinese food buffet at China Best is one of the strangest I've ever seen. Written in large black letters on pink cardboard, it notes that the sushi in the buffet is meant to be eaten with rice. If the fish is eaten without the rice, customers will be charged $1 per rice ball that is left on the plate. I understand the sentiment at work here: If customers didn't fill up on rice, the $14.29 buffet price tag ($7.57 for lunch) would be a money pit for the restaurant.

For a quick meal with Asian flair, Nina's is just the ticket. Billing itself as an espresso bar with a taste of the Orient, the small restaurant on the northwest corner of Centre and Calvert streets does a brisk business during the day selling coffee and takeout lunch fare. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that many of Nina's daytime customers wander over from the southeast corner of Centre and Calvert, home of The Baltimore Sun.) Nina's has extended its hours to 8 in the evening, and begun emphasizing Asian, mainly Korean, dishes on its menu.

Vanhdy Sesum's father is Chinese, and he himself has trained long years as a sushi chef. So you could reasonably wonder why he opened a Thai restaurant a couple of months ago. And not only that. He opened what may be the best Thai restaurant in the area.To be fair, Sesum's mother is Thai. But still, the 31-year-old's other two restaurants are Japanese: San Sushi in Cockeysville and San Sushi Too next door to Thai One On."Sushi does very well around here, but Japanese food isn't really strong," Sesum explains.

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The Sesum brothers, owners of several Japanese restaurants in the area, have made a success of their places by offering good food at good prices in a pleasant setting; by hiring staff who are exceptionally friendly and competent; and by dispensing with many of the rituals and traditions that might be off-putting to American tastes. Oh, yes: And by making their restaurants half-Thai. The new Sushi-San / Thai Jai Dee in Canton is the latest of these hybrids. Kam Sesum, the middle of the three brothers, opened it after working in his younger brother's Towson restaurant for several years.