Dentists put fish tanks in their waiting rooms to help people relax — watching fish swim lowers blood pressure — and to distract them from the imminence of bleeding gums and Novocain. At Tip Top Thai, a new sushi, noodle, and Thai-food joint in Teele Square, feathery-finned and chubby-faced fish swim in a tank by the greenhouse-style front window. But needless to say, what happens to your mouth at Tip Top is a whole lot more enjoyable than a drill in your molar.

And in typical Teele style, it’s not like Tip Top needs a fish tank to calm people down. It’s a relaxed room, no pomp or pretense — the type of place you could roll out of bed and right into (although most patrons probably prefer Cap’n Crunch to tuna maki for breakfast), or arrive at, sweaty and grungy, after helping your buddy move into a new apartment. You’ll be welcome regardless. The place is comfortably quirky: what first appears as randomness in the form of teacups sitting next to apples scattered around the room turns out to be a type of offering to Asian ancestors. The same teacup/apple pairing rests at the base of a small shrine by the take-out counter, bedecked with peacock feathers and an elephant figurine. And kids poke their heads out from the kitchen and from behind the sushi station, peeking in on the action in the restaurant.

The action involves servers carrying steaming bowls and plates of noodles, like the Red Sea Noodle Soup ($6.25) — a red broth with tofu, Chinese watercress, and seafood with a choice of rice wide noodles, egg noodles, or vermicelli — or the Moody Chef ($6.25), sautéed rice noodles, onions, peppers, sweet basil, and a spicy sauce. And Tip Top’s got all the sushi standards (maki rolls range from $4.25 to $7.95; two-piece nigiri orders range from $3 to $5.95). The una kya roll ($5.25), with eel and cucumber, is fresh and flavorful. The seaweed salad ($4.25) has the perfect sesame crunch, and appears, at first chopstick spearing, to be a generous size. But a further poke reveals a pile of iceberg lettuce below, boosting up the seaweed strands. If the filler were done away with, and the seaweed portioned a bit more liberally, it’d be perfect.

Tip Top Thai, located at 1127 Broadway, in Somerville, is open Monday through Thursday, from 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., on Friday and Saturday, from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on Sunday, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. Call (617) 627-9333.