January 22, 2003

The red and the blue

By Paul Reidinger

TAKE A STROLL down Balboa Street near its point of easterly origin and you might find yourself thinking of ... well, I want to say the Russo-Japanese war of a century ago, but maybe that's just martial me. Certainly most of us, glancing at the signage, would think of Russia and Japan, and food. There's a Russian restaurant here, a family sushi joint there, another Russian place at the corner, a Korean grill thrown in to complete the regional puzzle. And (modest sign of progress) all is peaceful. Food does have that effect.

The Richmond neighborhood's sushi places tend to be unfancy and to emphasize buffets and families. An exception opened a few years ago; this was Biiru Biru, which, with its bright red color scheme, house music, and Macao-born owner-chef, sought to bring a whiff of hip to an otherwise pleasantly dowdy area. Let us not forget that three years ago there was scarcely a vacant apartment to be found in this city, and young fortune-seekers were looking for places to live in neighborhoods they wouldn't have considered just a few years before.

But all things pass. The economic tide that had so thunderously rolled in just as thunderously rolled out, carrying a fair number of hopes and fragile enterprises with it, among them Biiru Biru. Recently I stepped into the space – an ordinary, boxy storefront, with a nice airiness – and found myself quietly stunned by the makeover. The new restaurant at the address is Deep Blue Sushi, and it is not remotely blue inside, except for its icon, a pair of interlocked squares tied together with a fish-shaped swirl.

The made-over interior bespeaks a relaxed elegance: there are peach tones, little halogen spot lamps hanging from the ceiling, a proper sushi bar of blond wood, behind which the owner-chef, Paul Lee, works his considerable magic. The hipness of Biiru Biru hasn't quite been extinguished – Deep Blue would fit in fine in the Mission District – but the place also seems to be deeply part of the neighborhood. On our first visit, safely ensconced at the bar (with another twosome a few chairs to our right), we watched as a party of eight (apparently several generations of a Japanese family) sat down for some late-holiday-season bonding.

Perhaps they'd heard that Deep Blue's food is a bit livelier than Natori's, the all-you-can-eat family sushi palace on the next block? If that's what they heard, then they heard right. Deep Blue's menu is typical of California sushi restaurants – there is, in particular, a wealth of avocado – but the food is shaped and handled with a precise stylishness every bit the match of the decor's and far above anything you'd ever find at a buffet.

I happen to love avocado, so for me the spicy girls ($6.50) – a pair of avocado golf balls stuffed with spicy tuna – was a dish I was destined to find deeply satisfactory. And did. Only slightly less divine was a series of tatakis (filets of meat or fish briefly seared on one side, and all $8.50). These courses suggested, among other things, the chef's inclination to use sliced onion doused with ponzu sauce as a bed. Beef probably stood up the best to that strong accompanying flavor, while the albacore got slightly lost. The gamy bonito was the most striking in appearance, the iridescent ruby red triangles resembling pieces of beet. But the onions! My morning-after breath was potent.

Rolls abide by the California – indeed the American – rule that more is better and rich is better still. Some rolls are modest: a goldengate ($4.95) contented itself with tuna, avocado, and tobiko, while a Maui ($7.95) was really just a spicy tuna roll topped with seaweed salad. But you don't have to look far for extravagance. The B-52 roll ($6.95) combines spicy yellowtail with light mayo, shiso leaf, cucumber, and green onion; and the mighty pay roll ($12.95) – "big," laconically advises the menu – is glutted with pieces of deep-fried soft shell crab, snow crab meat, barbecued eel, garlic cucumber, avocado, and green onion.

After happily plowing through that, we too were glutted. But of course that was only partly the result of our own gluttony. It had to do too with the elegant little starters we were presented, gratis, before our orderings really got under way; the bonus dishes ranged from salmon nigiri on a bed of shredded onions and ponzu to some liverlike shreds of marinated tuna. It also had to do in part with the other excellent little dishes that popped up amid the rolls and the tataki; these included seasoned scallops ($3.75) wrapped in nori, a refreshing seaweed salad ($3.95), and ankimo ($6.95), disks of mild monkfish-liver pâté served on the ubiquitous bed of ponzu-steeped shredded onion.