It takes much more than a cute gimmick to make a great sushi bar. The very friendly young couple who opened Wasabi Sushi Japanese Restaurant in east Medford a month ago appear to have found the right combination of everything, having honed their skills in San Francisco.

If you like sushi, you’ll enjoy Wasabi. The owners offer the usual sushi fare but set themselves apart with a number of specialty rolls you won’t find anywhere else.

With hip names such as Sexy Roll with fried crab, cheese, eel and avocado ($6.75); Spicy Lambada Roll — the forbidden sushi? — with tuna, salmon, cucumber and avocado ($7.75); and Burning Spider Roll with spicy tuna and soft-shell crab ($8), these fill a plate and are almost a meal by themselves.

If sushi is what gets you in the door, it’s the service that will compel you to return to Wasabi. Our waitress provided the best service I’ve seen in a sit-down restaurant in quite a while.

Of course Wasabi, named after the fiery green horseradish paste that traditionally accompanies sushi, is more than a sushi bar. In fact, the sushi bar itself is quite small in the cozy little place formerly occupied by Zinnia Cafe at Cedar Mall on Crater Lake Avenue.

Advertisement

Wasabi offers a range of traditional appetizers, such as edamame (boiled soybeans — better than they sound, $3.50), gyoza (pork and cabbage potstickers, eight pieces for $4), tempura (shrimp and veggies fried in a lacy batter, $4.50) and vinegar salads featuring octopus, cucumber or shrimp or all three ($2.75-$5.75).

The menu also offers a variety of typical Japanese entrees, including yakisoba (stir-fried noodles, $6-$6.50), udon (noodle soup with veggies, chicken, beef, tempura prawns or "seafood," $6-$7.50), donburi (rice bowls with unagi, seafood, beef or chicken) and, of course, teriyaki (chicken, spicy chicken, beef or salmon, $6.50-$7.50).

All entrees come with soup and salad, and if rice or noodles aren’t part of the dish, you get rice, too.

Hungry for sushi, I was pleased to find Wasabi has a specialty roll featuring my favorite, unagi, a freshwater eel considered a delicacy in Japan and by me. It’s typically broiled or grilled with a sort of sweet barbecue sauce.

For sushi, it usually comes on a finger of rice held fast with a thin band of nori. Wasabi’s owners, bless their hearts, have seen fit to create a Double Unagi Roll, which rolls layers of cucumber slivers, unagi, rice, avocado and a mix of avocado and eel. The long roll is sliced and topped with my other favorite sushi ingredient, flying-fish roe. I was sold.

My lovely dining partner — a pro at restaurant eating and judging, having managed a large restaurant kitchen in Ashland — ordered a combination bento box ($7.50) that appeared larger than most I’ve seen. Having chosen teriyaki chicken and gyoza, she described the chicken as "fine, but was made from previously frozen chicken breasts, and not quite hot enough."

She shared one of her gyoza, and we both loved them. These were lightly fried, making them gently crispy. My partner said she even enjoyed the iceberg lettuce salad, with its special Japanese dressing.

The only quibbles from our table were minor — the Hamachi nigiri (yellowtail, two pieces, $4.25) I ordered for my partner was not as fresh as should be expected, but it quickly disappeared nonetheless. And the chicken in my partner’s bento: She’s spoiled on fresh organic birds and can spot the frozen variety easily.

After we finished, the sushi chef treated us to two specialty pieces made of salmon, tuna, cucumber and avocado wrapped in nori and sprinkled with flying-fish roe. That touch, a personal choice of the sushi chef and complimentary to boot (the owners didn’t know I was reviewing the place), was the final grace on a very good lunch — $25 including a generous tip.

Our green tea (fresh and hot and quickly refilled, with tea leaves swirling on the bottom of our cups) and the miso soup also were very good.

We learned that the owners, Terry and Kija Lee, moved their family up from San Francisco, where they continue to run Nara Sushi. Surprise, surprise, San Francisco’s sushi bloggers trumpet Nara’s quality, originality and service.

There was more than enough here for my dining partner and I to commit to our lunch as a mere appetizer with a dinner visit as the main course.

— Scott T. Smith