By Paul Reidinger

AMONG THE MANY hats a restaurateur must wear is that of real estate agent, for location is destiny, and real estate is, as we all know from the deathless cliché, location, location, and location. But location, in restaurantland, is a nuanced issue that goes beyond views or parking or foot traffic; it matters who a restaurant's neighbors are, and it particularly matters if some – or a lot – of the neighbors are good restaurants. The restaurant row is neither an accident nor a cliché; it is the establishment of a standard and a raising of expectations that benefits all parties involved.

The restaurant row, or cluster, that has bloomed around the intersection of Ninth Avenue and Irving is, frankly, one of the best in the city – and for diversity and value might well be the best. The location is highly favorable, with UCSF and its large student population to the east, the rest of the Inner Sunset to the west, and Golden Gate Park's arboretum and flocks of tourists just steps away across Lincoln Way. All this means demand generated across a wide spectrum, and the result is a wealth of places offering practically every sort of food there is to offer: burritos, hummus, pastries, burgers, naan, pad thai, breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, tea, smoothies. Sushi too.

When I first stepped into 18-month-old Jimisan recently, I wondered for a moment if I'd wandered by accident into a Japanese successor to Nan King Road Bistro, the Hong Kong-style restaurant that (I discovered by poking my head back out the door) is still going great guns a few doors down. The two restaurants don't really look alike – NKRB is primary colors, concrete floors, and halogen lights; Jimisan, blond wood screens and tinkling water – but they do share (beyond a storefront layout) a certain New World, West Coast sleekness of interior design and a vibrancy of cooking that is central to all the California cuisines. When we asked the sushi chef if his inventive rolls – among them the Muni roll ($8.99), slices of tuna atop rice rounds filled with barbecued eel and avocado and evidently named in honor of the N Judah trains rolling to and fro on the street – were authentically Japanese, he burst out laughing.

"No!" he said. "California!"

Ah. That would explain much, including the avocado and the menu's designation of the restaurant as "bistro sushi" – a confused but somehow vivid conflation of nouns that suggests table service, casual hipness, and youth, along with ritual Japanese precision about fish. Jimisan's sushi chefs know their stuff, and if, like me, you want to avoid eating fish that are being overfished or otherwise badly managed, you will do well to sit at the sushi bar near the rear of the restaurant and pose your questions, because the chefs have answers.

We learned, for instance, that that day's yellowtail, or hamachi, had been brought from Japanese waters, while the albacore ($4.25 for two pieces of buttery nigiri) had been taken in Canada. As for the snow crab packed atop the marvelous blizzard roll ($10.99) – we didn't ask, but Alaska or Canada would be likely sources and in either case well-managed, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's seafood-watch Web site, with the Alaskan fisheries slightly more stressed than their Canadian counterparts, though recovering. The roll was stuffed with shrimp tempura for a bit of crunch and topped with a raspberry coulis. Did Japanese sushi chefs use raspberry coulis, we wondered? Answer: another laugh and shake of the head. "Plums, maybe," he said.

Could plums have rescued the grilled jumbo squid ($5.95), flabby rings whose rubberiness was only partly concealed by the accompanying sauces, ponzu and aioli? Doubtful, though the sauces were excellent. But we did like the seaweed salad ($4.50), with its mild marinade of rice-wine vinegar, and we asked for (and were graciously given) several refills of the complimentary bowl of shredded pickled cabbage, crunchy with sesame seeds and smelling faintly of licorice.

The nonsushi – or, let us say, bistro, and mainly cooked – items are, in fact, quite as good in their own way as the various preparations of uncooked fish. And, as an added bonus, if you are having a lunch of donburi or obento box, you can avail yourself of table service and the slightly mazelike intimacy afforded by the Japanese-style partitions in the dining room.

Teriyaki, being one of the first Japanese food sensations to find a wide audience in this country, long ago found itself reduced to a sweetish, thick sauce that was mass-produced, bottled, and sold from supermarket shelves, but to have it done right in a Japanese restaurant is to be reminded of why it became popular in the first place. The word teriyaki is a compound of luster and grill, and it tends to mean, in the end, grilled or broiled pieces of flesh that have acquired a nice glaze from a marinade consisting principally of mirin (a sweet wine) and soy sauce, often with some fresh grated ginger. Beef teriyaki don ($7.50) arranges strips of beef answering to this description atop a mound of rice in a deep bowl, while chicken teriyaki ($7.95) dispenses with the rice bowl in favor of a plate-wide deconstruction that also includes a potato salad of half-mashed spuds and, on the side, a cup of miso soup. No raspberries to be seen, nor even plums, but then, they weren't needed.

Jimisan. 1380 Ninth Ave. (at Judah), SF. (415) 564-8989. Lunch: Mon.-Fri., 11:45 a.m.-2 p.m. Dinner: Mon.-Thurs., 5-10:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-11 p.m. Beer, wine, and sake. American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.