Sushi Express

The case for fish flakes

by Michelle Chihara

ON THE CHEAP

It's usually a good sign when the late-lunch crowd at a Japanese restaurant greets the waitress in Japanese, and the free reading material is written entirely in kanji. Sushi Express, a basement-level stop on Beacon Street, follows through on its promise with basic but very Japanese Japanese food. Like the plate of cold tofu covered with fish flakes, the dried beige stuff that looks kind of like sloughed skin but adds a subtle, briny crunch to the tofu's bland sweetness.

Granted, the sushi menu includes Americanized specials like the Philly roll ("Crab Stick and Cream Cheese" -- a travesty). But there's also a selection of Japanese vegetables such as ume-shiso, the sour plums that don't appear on most American menus. Besides sushi, for five bucks you can get a huge ceramic bowl of udon soup. It's not fancy (no garnishes here), but it's plentiful and the udon noodles are just right, fat and tubular. The soup comes with seaweed and thin sweet squares of fried bean curd. Japanese food is made for slurping; supposedly you get more oxygen in your mouth and it tastes better.

For dessert, try the green-tea ice-cream treat. Two little balls of very green ice cream come inside a chewy, speckled green, pounded-rice dough called mochi. It's the Japanese version of a profiterole. Sushi Express's background music is strictly Top 40: very authentic. Add bar stools and a young, good-looking staff, and it feels kind of like a Tokyo version of 90210's Peach Pit.

Sushi Express, located at 1038 Beacon Street, in Brookline, is open daily from 11:45 a.m. to 10 p.m. Call (617) 738-5658.

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