Sushi

Kyodai bills itself as Baltimore's only rotating sushi bar. The concept is simple, if at first unintentionally amusing: You sit at the bar with your napkin, chopsticks, soy, wasabi and ginger. The sushi-tenders roll up various concoctions, cut them, usually into quarters, plate them, and place them on a shiny silver conveyor belt that chugs along the inside perimeter of the bar. And as they pass, you reach up and pluck down plates that look right for you. No menu. No wondering what it might look like.

Open only since late September, Baltimore Sticky Rice already feels like an established presence on the Fells Point scene. The new place is performing the impressive trick of feeling like a part of the neighborhood while expanding its appeal beyond the cobblestones. So, on an unpredictably crowded Tuesday night, the crowd at Baltimore Sticky Rice is a healthy mix of downtown and uptown folks, most of them young, and all of them having a good time. This is the third Sticky Rice, and it walks the shrewdly designed path laid down by the original in Richmond, Va., which was founded in 1999 by John Yamashita and Jason Henry, and a second Sticky Rice, located in Washington.

Kona Grill is a high-energy place. Pulsating music permeates the smartly designed, 160-seat restaurant carved out of the first floor of the Verizon building. The tables are on fire. OK, just one has a fire pit. Its flames leap from a table on the patio where couples cuddle on the nearby couches. The staff, all clad in black, move briskly. Even the colorful fish swimming in the giant aquariums at the entrance of the restaurant seem hip. Sitting at Pratt and Charles streets next to the Baltimore Convention Center, the six-week-old restaurant — and the 25th such Kona Grill in the nation — is well-positioned to attract conventioneers and visitors to the Inner Harbor.

On a busy night at Sushi Sono , which by many accounts is every night, the wait for a table in the cramped entrance area, even with a reservation, can be an exercise in patience. Formalities and niceties are mostly dispensed with, and the service on a busy night can border on the hectoring. The idea that you could maintain a state of quiet contemplation in Sushi Sono's hectic dining room is laughable. None of this matters. The reason to make the trip to Lake Kittamaqundi, to put up with the confusing signs and alienating ingress into Wincopin Circle, is that Sushi Sono might just have the best sushi in the four-county area.

The client's in town. The client loves sushi. I want the client to love me. I take the client to Joss Cafe. I pick up the tab. Done deal. You can replace "client" with out-of-town guest, superior officer, love interest, fellow foodie, or anyone else you want to impress, Joss promises to appeal because of two strong leading indicators: fine sushi, great space. Just don't go there expecting bargain-basement tabs. When you walk up half a flight of stairs off the sidewalk on 413 N. Charles and enter Joss, you're stepping up in more ways than one. 12:42 p.m. We enter a sparsely attended dining room and are offered our choice of unoccupied tables.

For the restaurants of Fells Point, the recent opening of the $100-million Thames Street Wharf Building on Harbor Point was effectively overnight delivery for 600 new Morgan Stanley mouths to feed lunch. Positioned strategically between the pubs and taverns of lower Fells Point and the more upscale offerings of Harbor East, this new building has no in-house eating facility of its own. There are dozens of easy walks from the building's front door, and one of the closest is RA Sushi Bar Restaurant (1390 Lancaster St., 410-522-3200)

The Geisha Roll ($11.95) at Chiyo Sushi in Mount Washington got me. I was taken by its avocado bottom, enthralled by its chopped salmon salad middle, swept away by its lotus root top. The Dragon Roll ($9.95) also turned my head. This sleek combination of crab and cucumber on the inside and eel and tobiko (fish roe) on the outside was fresh and appealing. The Orioles Roll ($11.95), a mixture of white tuna, tempura flakes and sweet hot sauce wrapped with salmon, avocado and tobiko, had its moments in part because the Orioles had won the day I visited 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.

It may have been a packed house at RA Sushi's happy hour, but Laura Almalel was a standout. The 45-year-old financial adviser for Fulton Financial likes to stand out from the crowd, when she's on her own time. "At work, I dress pretty conservatively. I wear suits. But I try to push it a little bit by wearing some really stylish shoes. ... Off work, I like to be a little bit more fun." We think the Annapolis resident got it just right. The look: Gray rayon one-shoulder Blaque Label knit top. Dark wash skinny 7 For All Mankind jeans.