Rules are made to enjoy at sushi spot

PHONE: 206-935-4339

ADDRESS: 4725 California Ave. S.W., www.sushiwhore.com

PRICES: Lunch $5-$15; dinner $7-$25; sushi $3-$30

HOURS: Lunch 11:32 a.m. -- 2:01 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; dinner 5:03--9:02 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 5:06--9:28 p.m.

Friday and Saturday

BAR: Beer and wine

SMOKING: No

RESERVATIONS: No

PAYMENT: American Express, Diner's Club, MasterCard, Visa

SOUND: Noisy, neighborly

ACCESS: No obstacles

PARKING: Free city lot behind Mashiko on 44th Street Southwest

BEST BETS: Any sushi; bento boxes from $8; tonkatsu $14; seafood curry $20

RATING: ***

The decor is flying pigs, strange Japanese wind-up dolls, strings of colored lights and real art on the walls. Saltwater fish tanks are filled with unlikely critters fluttering in crystalline waters. Owner Hajime Sato dances behind the sushi bar to the straining strains of ABBA, juggling knives and ahi loins like a one-man chorus line.

Even more incredible: There are white women making sushi!

A laptop in the corner has their Web site (www.sushiwhore.com) dialed up with the Webcam trained on the sushi bar, catching and beaming all this to the world.

Sato's printed rules are philosophical, didactic, whimsical and not without a little youthful audacity. But West Seattle's Mashiko is in its eighth year.

"Music is our choice" is No. 1. The sounds are most uncommon for a Japanese restaurant. There's techno, blues, latin -- almost anything other than traditional Japanese music, which reminds Sato of grammar school and death. "Believe me you," he writes on the Web site, if you've ever been to an elementary school in Japan ... death isn't too bad."

The white women sushi thing is not just a glib observation. Women in Japan are considerably behind in breaking into the men's world of work. Even in Seattle, it's relatively rare to find a woman making sushi. Furthermore, most sushi chefs are reluctant to train Americans -- usually the highly skilled males come here from Japan.

This isn't just a social experiment. Sato's willingness to train Americans of both sexes has given him an inspired and loyal staff, as interested and excited about the food as their boss.

Kirstin Schlecht's only cooking experience was in a Midwest sports bar. An Oklahoman who'd never eaten sushi (not unusual for Oklahomans, I'm told), she arrived in Seattle and answered a no-experience-necessary ad to learn sushi at Mashiko. In a year or so, she not only was doing that, but she had married her teacher, owner Sato.


	Kirstin Schlecht, sushi chef at Mashiko in West Seattle, prepares for the evening rush. JOSHUA TRUJILLO/P-I

Silvio Lopez, a native of Nicaragua, veteran of Salty's and the Lizard Lounge, is especially gifted in the hot kitchen. Ed Slocombe, a former software engineer rolls sushi alongside Mariah Kmitta, a graphics designer who's likewise found salvation in the convivial cuisine. They both say, "It's the best job I ever had."

There's skepticism from Asian and non-Asian customers alike when Caucasians are on the rice-fondling side of a sushi bar. "Sometimes people walk in, turn around and leave -- they think we're not authentic," says Sato.

OK, OK, you say, this is all very off-beat and cute, but is the food any good? I was delighted.

On the first visit, we ordered omakase, which usually means, "let the chef decide." At Mashiko it means, "blow my mind, please." We told our waiter what we wanted to spend and the kitchen started lobbing food at us. We got singing scallops broiled in the shells with uni butter, spinach, rice noodles and tofu; rockfish sashimi with pungent shiso leaves, citrusy ponzu sauce, anchored to the ground with toasted sesame seeds.

The wasabi is from the fresh root (not powder), the soy sauce is mellowed with a seaweed stock.

There were broiled shiitake mushroom caps with rounds of ankimo, steamed monkfish liver, a dish like an umami tsunami that had me losing my place in the conversation.

There was thick-sliced white king salmon wrapped around rice wrapped around asparagus tempura.

Omakase helped us obey rules 10, and 12, which are "Try new things" and "Because we said so!" Nearly comatose after this bout, we found that the oral gratification mitigated the authoritarianism and we naturally fell in line with No. 7. "After you eat, eat more."

The juicy hamachi ribs, pieces of yellowtail tuna broiled with Sato's fabled garlic sauce are usually regarded as trim and if not eaten by the cooks, are thrown away. Grabbing them as we would a spare rib at a barbecue, it was a chance to live up to another house rule: "Etiquette is for fools."

Nobody's etiquette, by the way, would have you pick sushi up with chopsticks. It's amusing to Japanese to see us tremulously use the pick-up sticks on the little bundles they've carefully engineered for fingers.

There was a spicy scallop-crab salad with okra tempura and tobiko, the crunchy flying fish roe with the subtle tang of the sea. It was sprinkled with sakura denbu, sweet/salty fish flakes pink as a little girl's bicycle.


	P-I.

There was a plate of salty, hot and crispy sawagani, the tiny crabs dropped live into the deep fryer and eaten shells and all.

There's all the standard sushi like nigiri with mackerel or striped bass, tamago or thick slices of blue fin toro. There's the makizushi-like Spyder Roll with soft-shelled crab. There's a California Roll with crab, avocado and cukes; an Alaska Roll with smoked salmon, cream cheese and rumors of a cross of the two called the Junction Roll. You'd have to be from West Seattle to order one or get the joke.

Sato encourages his chefs to know their customers, remember what they like and fashion dishes to their liking. Lopez remembered that I liked the broiled shiitakes and had raved about the white salmon, so on another night, he sent me a saute of the two with a creamy sauce and slivered salmon skin.

This is a young place but draws avidly enough from the graying Pepsi Generation to offset the techno music and give it a certain credibility. Food is shared intergenerationally table to table and everybody knuckles under to the rule: "Talk to the people around you (as long as you're not eating)."

Michael Hood can be reached at 206-448-8133 or at: askthecritic@seattlepi.com.

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