Great Japanese food, by Koreans

The Ka, housed in an ex-Godfather’s Pizza and guarded by a stone Buddha just outside its main doors, bills itself as a Japanese bistro. Well, I’ll bite.

It’s just that the Ka’s owners, as well as their servers and sushi men (the latter clad in red happi coats, sporting the usual John Belushi-like white headbands), are either Korean or second-generation Korean-American. Only the Ka’s food, save one Korean-style short-rib dish, known as kalbi in a Korean restaurant, is solidly Japanese.

This is not a bad thing. Koreans are found in most major Japanese cities, and their influence on the host cuisine is well-documented. (Mainly, they like to spice it up.)

Furthermore, many of our best sushi bars, such as Sushi Fever on upper Sahara and Henderson’s I Love Sushi, are Korean to the core. Matter of fact, Ka’s owner, David Lee, informed me that his head sushi man came to the restaurant from I Love Sushi. That’s not a bad thing, either, since I have had many good dinners at I Love Sushi.

Oddly, and this may be more of an issue for sociologists than for food journalists, few of our sushi bars are actually Japanese-owned. Most of them belong to either people from Taiwan, whose take on sushi I tend not to care for, or to Koreans, whose take I usually like.

(Only Koto, Sen of Japan and Nobu in the Hard Rock stand out among Japanese-owned sushi businesses locally, unless you want to count the chain, Makino, and the all-you-can-eat concept.)

The Ka is a big, unwieldy looking space, painted mostly gray, with a giant sushi counter in its dead middle. There are a half-dozen plasma-screen TVs tuned to ESPN and pulsating Asian pop on the sound system. The servers, mainly women, wear black.

I like to come here at lunch, when the bento-box special represents one of the best deals in town, and certainly in this restaurant-deprived area of Green Valley. For just $8.95, an eclectic, multi-course lunch can be had, starting with miso soup, including a salad dressed in a tangy, sesame oil and miso sauce, and offering a choice of two entrees.

You also get gyoza, pan-fried, meat-filled dumplings, and a mound of Japanese rice. It’s all quite delicious, especially the breaded pork cutlet known as tonkatsu, and the Japanese-style shrimp and vegetable tempura, a huge portion that you probably won’t finish. If you were to order this meal in Japan, the soup would come at the end.

But at night, most of the customers, greeted at the door by the traditional Japanese word of welcome, a boisterous “irrasshaimase,” seem to be here for sushi, and sushi is what the restaurant, in the end, does best. Hand rolls, special rolls, nigiri and a giant section called Fusion Rolls all showcase good products and great creativity.

I’m not much for gooey rolls loaded with mayo, but Sexy Girl, subtitled “Taste Like My X-Girlfriend,” is delicious, a mass of shrimp tempura, crab and cucumber, with spicy tuna and scallop, spicy ponzu sauce, eel sauce, and a crunch topping. Got all that? And if the name strikes you as cheeky, then how about a Screaming Orgasm, thinly sliced seared tuna topped with ponzu and spicy mayo. I asked the head sushi man how to say this in his language. “I never scream,” he replied, dryly.

Fusion Rolls, meanwhile, can be addictive. How about Shrimp with Soybean Paper, a sort of makeshift spring roll stuffed with cooked shrimp, avocado, burdock root for added crunch and asparagus. Or perhaps you’d fancy the kittenish Yummy Crispy, two kinds of tuna, tomato and spicy mayo, served on platter-like, giant deep-fried noodle squares. Both these dishes worked for me.

Non-sushi items do, as well. Appetizers are prepared in the back kitchen. Classics such as agedashi tofu, deep-fried tubes of the dreaded bean curd served with a tempura dipping sauce, and yakitori, skewered, broiled chicken glazed with a sweet sauce, are the equal of those in any upscale Japanese restaurant in town.

Soft-shell crab tempura is nicely battered and has a briny flavor that tastes of the sea. The dish called Bacon on a Stick is really bacon-wrapped shrimp and scallop or asparagus (your choice) on a bamboo skewer. Of course there is the sushi bar standard Dynamite, which is a seafood mélange baked in the oven in a horrible mayonnaise sauce. Yarrrgh!

For those who like their sushi straight up, no chaser, nigiri, clumps of vinegared rice topped with perfectly cut pieces of raw fish, egg, bean curd or vegetable, is just fine, thanks, fresh, shiny and good-tasting. Four dollars gets you two pieces. For only $1 more, you can have any sushi topping as sashimi, namely, sans the rice.

Like I said, I’ll bite. Probably more than once.

The Ka

Suggested dishes: bento box, $8.95 (weekdays until 3 p.m.); Sexy Girl, $12.95; Yummy Crispy, $8.95; mochi ice cream, $3.