This space used to house Vienna Kitchen, which had hardly any Viennese food, but was so named because Symphony Hall, around the corner, often featured composers from that European city. The food was an eclectic mix reflecting the restaurant’s Asian ownership, although it also had European desserts. Despite some pan-Asian dishes, Symphony Sushi is explicitly Japanese. It has also lost all desserts other than Japanese-flavored ice creams: red bean, green tea, and ginger. On two visits we found the service excellent, the food all rather good, and some of the sushi and sashimi very good indeed.

Certainly you won’t fail with a light meal made from either sashimi appetizer. The sashimi salad ($7.95) gives you a choice of tuna, salmon, or yellowtail. The yellowtail we had was the lightest of the three, with a fresh sea flavor and aroma, nicely complemented by the gingery French dressing on the house salad. The "sashimi appetizer" ($8.95) is a square platter with two pieces each of tuna, salmon, a dense-fleshed white fish, false crabsticks, and mackerel. Mackerel is a cooked sashimi, but must be made carefully because soy brings out its fishiness. Symphony Sushi’s chef does right by it, and the platter also has a couple of real shiso leaves, pickled ginger, wasabi (the fiery green stuff), and the other typical trimmings.

Goma ae ($4.50), the Japanese version of spinach and sesame, is here prettily compressed into four cylinders, and has a somewhat fresher flavor than the common Korean version. Seaweed salad ($4.50) is now almost as popular with American diners as fried calamari, and better for you. This is a nice version with some red-lettuce leaves for contrast on the plate. I also liked the shu mai ($4.95) — spelled "shai mai" on this menu — which are scallop-shaped wrapped dumplings, either fried or steamed. The steamed version brings out the flavor of the delicate shrimp-pork filling. Seafood pancake ($6.95) is in the Korean mode, starchy and greasy, but served hot and studded with plenty of fish, shrimp, calamari, scallions, and red onions.

Of course, you can also start with sushi. "Tiger eye" ($6.95) is scored slices of cooked squid, wrapped around salmon and avocado for neat little bites. More substantial is something like "Symphony Roll" ($6.50), which is fried shrimp, peach, cucumber, mayonnaise, and bean sprouts with a few leaves, all rolled up with rice in a skin of algal seaweed. The predominant flavor is "fried," but the textures are varied, and it’s even sort of healthful.

More substantial entrées run to sushi assortments, teriyaki, tempura, and house specials which might be viewed as "fusion." We particularly liked sea scallops in soy-bean sauce ($14.95). This dish is actually sea scallops sliced on the equator, fried to a near crisp with a salty spice crust, and served with asparagus, carrot, and salad, all in a nifty ginger-French dressing. Teriyaki tuna ($13.95) is a similar platter, but with a butterflied tuna steak (not as heavy as sushi tuna, but a dark, meaty fish, done medium-rare). The dressing is just a little soy and sesame, but it’s good eating.

Tempura udon ($10.95) could also be made with soba (buckwheat noodles) or ramen (Chinese spaghetti). What’s different here is that the impeccable fried shrimp are served on the side, giving the diner a choice between letting the breading melt into the soup, or eating crisp fried shrimp (and broccoli, sweet potato, and carrot) between slurps. But the thick rice noodles are pasta at its starchy best, and the stock is quite good, picking up bits of flavor from scallion, fish sausage, broccoli, seaweed, and onions.

A sushi-sashimi combination ($22.95) was good for a half-dozen tuna rolls, five finger sushi (tuna, salmon, white fish, yellow-fleshed fish, and a dark-fleshed fish I especially liked), and 10 pieces of sashimi (the best being red tuna, tilefish, the dense white-fleshed fish I can’t identify, and salmon). None of this was novel, but it was uniformly good, and the rice was reasonably fresh. With this dinner, I had a butter-white miso soup ($1.95 à la carte).

The odd dinner out is ma po tofu ($8.95). "It’s the easiest answer to obtain authentic Chinese taste," says the menu. Actually, it’s not so easy, because the classic flavor of this Sichuan dish requires the menthol-citric Sichuan peppercorns. These are impossible to find at the moment, because the US government fears that they’re hosts to a citrus parasite, and so wants them pasteurized before importing. But there’s no certification, so you have to get them from returning travelers smuggling in peppercorns. Sure enough, this dish at Symphony Sushi has none of that flavor — the related Japanese sansho pepper would be a good substitute — and somewhat larger cubes of tofu and more onions than are really authentic. Nevertheless, this is a good dish, somewhat spicy against the tender blandness of the tofu, and especially over the fragrant sesame rice.

Besides beer and wine, the drinks include a number of sakes by the bottle, but only Geikeikan by the individual carafe ($3.95). I asked for cold and got hot. Hot was good anyway. The tea is green, with a toasted-grain flavor (like Korean barley tea) that I actually prefer to the spinachy aroma of top-shelf Japanese tea. The ice creams ($4.95) are four-scoop servings, and thus will give a number of diners a little sweet-savory taste of the dryish green-tea and red-bean flavors, or the sweeter ginger.

Service both visits was quite good. The restaurant now looks like a sushi bar, with blond-wood accents and a few Japanese lanterns and such. It’s only moderately loud, despite some of old Viennese music as background, and some light jazz.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com