Tempura

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.

As 2006 kicks off, a couple of Baltimore hangouts are hoping to combine the old with the new. In the basement of the Belvedere Hotel, Kamikazis has just opened where Kobe Teppan closed last November. It, too, is a sushi/hibachi Japanese restaurant. And it, too, is hoping to hook B-more's late-night crowd. But Kamikazis manager Hillary Herlehy says she and owner James C. Foster hope to ratchet things up a notch. To start with, Herlehy says they've tried to give the place a slightly more "energetic feel."

Our dinner at the Charred Rib's new and more spacious location - half a mile away from its old location on York Road - didn't start off as well as it might have. We had had reservations for a week, so we weren't happy about being put in the Outer Siberia room behind the bar - a brown box of a room with no pictures on the walls. Of course, not everyone can sit in the two pretty main dining rooms when the restaurant is this busy. But we wanted to.Not only was our dining room ugly, it was noisy.

Sometimes when restaurants close for an extended period of time, they never quite recover when they reopen. This is not the case with Shin Chon. Since it reopened after major renovations, it's on its way to becoming the Korean equivalent of the Cheesecake Factory - at least as far as a lengthy wait for a table goes. OK, a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean. True, Howard County has a sizable Korean population and Shin Chon is, as far as I know, the only restaurant in the county that offers Korean barbecue cooked at the table.

Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar is one of the Harbor East residents celebrating its 10th anniversary in Baltimore this year. Steak rules here, and you'd be foolish to disobey. I haven't had a more satisfying rib-eye than the one Fleming's recently served me. I loved looking at it and eating every robust bite. Fleming's signature steak preparation involves seasoning with kosher salt and black pepper and finishing with butter and parsley. This makes the beef, USDA prime, both outstandingly flavorful and gorgeous.

Each week a nutritionist from the University of Maryland Medical Center provides a guest post to The Baltimore Sun's health blog Picture of Health (baltimoresun.com/pictureofhealth). This week, Ellen Loreck weighs in on sodium. According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, people should consume between 1,500 and 2,300 mgs of sodium per day. That's equal to about 2/3 to 1 teaspoon of salt, which isn't much. Most of the sodium comes from processed foods, so eating out becomes a challenge.

Some 20 area restaurants will trot out their best soft-shell crab recipes for the fourth annual Soft Shell Crab Celebration. The promotion is organized by Dine Downtown. The 12-day promotion starts on May 17 and runs through May 28. Here's whose participating, with what they're offering, when they've decided: Aldo's Ristorante Italiano -- Soft-shell crabs, stone-ground wheat crust, in brown butter and remoulade sauce, served with a sweet corn fritter Alewife Brewer's Art -- Cornmeal-crusted soft shells and fried Chesapeake oysters Charleston -- Cornmeal-fried soft-shell crab, lemon brown butter, upland cress, pickled green tomato Cinghiale -- Crispy soft-shell crabs, pickled sweet peppers, capers, baby arugula, lettuce sauce Diamond Tavern -- Beer-battered soft-shell crab sandwich with lemon caper sauce and arugula; cornmeal dusted soft-shell crab with spicy chili sauce and fried basil and spinach; sauteed soft-shell crab Provencal with wilted spinach and roasted tomatoes.

SAMBUCA FRIEND SQUASH The more casual side at Cinghiale - the enoteca - keeps getting more accessible. So get a plate of late-summer bliss - firm yellow squash enveloped in a crispy batter, pleasingly salty with just the faintest whiff of anise. Better yet, have them as an accompaniment to executive chef Julian Marucci's Roman fried chicken (R.F.C.), where the tempura-like batter seems to be suspended in air over the juicy skin beneath ($16). Eat it outside, with a glass of Frascati. Try the Sambuca Fried Squash at Cinghiale, 822 Lancaster St. 410-547-8282.

If you like the Ravens and you like sushi, you should be twice as happy about the recent signing of free agent cornerback Samari Rolle, whose name sounds like it would taste delicious on a plate with wasabi and pickled ginger. In honor of the newest Raven, we pondered just what a sushi Samari Roll should look and taste like. Here are some of our suggestions. Pick your favorite, then submit your own ideas. Tempura eggplant and sauted purple onion, to match Samari's new uniform color, with eel (hopefully he's slippery on the field)

I must confess that until I visited Umi Sake, my image of sushi eaters was that they were young, svelte jet-setters. Not here. At Umi Sake, sushi is mainstream America. There are families with small children, plus-size people out for an evening, as well as eaters who do indeed look like members of the svelte set. They fill this Cockeysville restaurant, a low-rise building squeezed between a gas station and a Mercedes-Benz dealership on York Road. There is a small bar and lounge, as well as two good-size dining rooms with low ceilings and white wallpaper.