I’ve only been to Japan a couple of times and can’t say I know it well, but I certainly associate Japanese restaurants in the U.S. with a certain visual aesthetic. More than any other cuisine, the setting is integral to the dining-out experience. It’s apparently a widely held view, since Japanese restaurants share a visual distinction that one doesn’t find in purveyors of any other cuisine.

All recently opened Japanese restaurants around town that I can think of—the wonderful Midori, the not-so-wonderful Ikasu, the somewhere-in-between (but leaning the right direction) Sushi Tango—expended thought and funds on décor. And our restaurant-of-the-week, Fuji Ya on Lake and Lyndale, was no slouch in this department either.

But here’s the rub. If you don’t view the food-and-fixtures juxtaposition as creating a whole rather than a mere sum of parts, if décor is marketing to you, the odds are that the visual appeal will start to tarnish. Reviews of your place will recall how things used to be and aren’t any more. Any claim your restaurant might fairly have made on being an authentic Japanese restaurant will no longer be credible.

Indeed, my first couple of experiences at Fuji Ya were very good. But on returning to the place last week, after a gap of a couple of years, I found the restaurant a faded version of the charming original.

The grassy patch in front of the entrance has fallen to weed, the welcome mat is cruddy, and a few insect generations have elapsed since the plexiglass cases displaying the kimonos in the back room were cleaned. The large etched-glass depiction of Mt. Fuji on the back wall with its play of backlighting, the wood and metal stylized trees, the attractive sushi and drink bars in the front room with windows looking out on Lake Street are all still there, and the kimonos remain striking, but the place has a tired look that’s edging toward frumpiness.

I couldn’t tell you if the menu has changed, but it is extensive. There are the usual appetizers—gyoza (dumplings), edamame (soy beans boiled in the shell), tempura—but there are also some items that aren’t readily seen elsewhere locally: the negi maki, which is kind of a roll made with a thin strip of ribeye with asparagus and scallions as filling and then grilled, and the spinach gomaae, which we ordered and which turned out to be boiled and chilled spinach formed into large medallions and placed in a very sweet sesame sauce—the dish was a combination of side vegetable and dessert, both components were fine but the synthesis was forced.

Also as an appetizer, although it stayed at our table throughout the meal, we had a selection of Japanese pickles, oshinko. The varieties included two kinds of eggplant and radishes each, although I couldn’t identify them from look or taste. Good anonymous beer snacks! It turns out that some main dishes come with oshinko even when not so noted on the menu, so unless you want to treat Fuji Ya as a watering hole it may be unnecessary to order them.

Fuji Ya does sushi, but other options are also available, including salads, ramen soups, noodles, don buris, tempura dinners, and bento boxes. Exotica abound, particularly in the salads; one of these consists of a variety of marinated seaweed over cucumbers, another of marinated squid with mountain ferns.

I ordered the unagi don buri, a rice bowl with broiled, caramelized ("barbequed" according to the menu) freshwater eel. I’ve had this at a few other places, most recently at Midori; Fuji Ya’s rendition didn’t approach that level. The unagi skin was thick and fatty and the flesh itself was mushy. Too much sauce had been poured onto the rice, so that not only was it difficult to get many mouthfuls of plain rice but also the bottom of the bowl had a pool of the stuff. Unagi is a bit sweet anyway, but the excess of sauce made the rice a second dessert—before we’d even got to ordering any!

Most menu items come with soup and salad, so we got to sample these as well. The miso soup was strong rather than delicate and the tofu had the consistency of mozzarella. The dressing for the side salad had been applied by the same hand that poured the sauce in the don buri—the liquid had settled in a sizable pool at the bottom of the salad bowl, leaving a paste-like covering on the fixings.

B got the Fuji-Ya Special Bento Box which generally seemed an improvement over my order.

Miscellaneous Notes: One of my favorite restaurants, unfortunately not open for lunch, is Auriga (Hennepin and Franklin), and it now features a new-look menu. The thin-crust pizza is incredible.... A recent visit to PVD (50^th and Bryant) made me realize why I sometimes stay away from it for months but then always return—the service was atrociously stand-offish but the food, while not great, was inventive.... Broder’s Pasta Bar is still as reliable as ever; how have they managed to maintain consistency and quality these many years?... On the other hand, there’s Tejas; no best-of nominations likely for it based on a dinner over the weekend but it still draws the Edina crowds.... ‘Nuff said.

Well now that I have that off my chest I can introduce you to the restaurant that The Lunch visited this week: Fuji Ya. If you’re a regular reader you know that we’re both quite fond of sushi, in fact Origami and Sushi Tango make my best of lists. Fuji Ya, with the exception of Nami, is probably the swankiest Japanese restaurant or at least it was when it opened a couple of years ago. The sushi bar and the cocktail lounge that it’s located in are still pretty posh with high windows and wooden accents. There are kimonos housed in glass displays hanging from the walls along with other oriental artifacts. The bar is probably a pretty good spot for a happy hour event, stoutly supported by an ample appetizer menu.

We started off with a couple of Japanese beers, a Sapporo in my case. Looking at the list of appetizers that includes the usual suspects: edamame (boiled soy bean in shell), gyoza (pork potstickers), yakatori (skewed, grilled chicken) and etc.. We decided to go with the unusual and ordered spinach gomaae (boiled and then chilled spinach served with a sweet sesame sauce that tasted suspiciously of peanuts) and oshinko iro iro (different varieties of Japanese pickles). The spinach gomaae was an odd (flavor) combination of boiled spinach and very sweet sauce, which was probably wasted on my palate. A, on the other hand, seemed to be fairing better as you might have suspected. The second appetizer—the oshinko iro iro—consisted of pickled vegetables that I had to ask our server to identify and they turned out to be an ordinary eggplant and radishes when we had suspected something far more exotic. The pickles, as we soon found out, cannot be readily eaten as appetizers but should rather be used as a relish for the main meal (or possibly as a lubricant for some drinking game!).

The menu is fairly extensive with the normal ala carte sushi options, tempura dishes, noodle dishes, and sushi &sashimi platters. Another option on the menu are the lunch bento boxes. These include the Fuji Ya special (sashimi, shrimp & salmon fry, negi-maki, oshinko, house salad and a choice of white or fried rice), Rieko’s (yakitori, kushiyaki, shrimp & vegetable tempura) and vegetarian (tofu, our old friend the spinach gomae & seaweed salad). The bento box also includes a cup of miso soup. I chose the Fuji Ya special. The miso soup was outstanding being warm, brothy and full of flavor – contrast this with the mud-like miso served at Ikasu. The rest of the bento box was a bit of a disappointment. The salmon was deep fried into oblivion as was the shrimp. The sashimi was slightly chewy and perhaps not of the quality that we have become accustomed to at places like Origami and Sushi Tango.

One item that stood out was the negi-maki; a sort of roll made out of thinly sliced ribeye containing scallions and asparagus. This is also available as an appetizer and I intend to order it the next time I see it on the menu. A went with the unagi don (broiled barbecued eel served over rice) and didn’t seem particularly pleased.

I haven’t had Fuji Ya’s sushi in over a year but the quality of the lunch we had would suggest that this restaurant falls in the third tier of sushi restaurants that we have reviewed. Tier one includes Origami and Sushi Tango. Tier two is made up of Nami, Midori (A would disagree with me here but I wonder if he’s been made to wait for over forty-five minutes for a sushi order on a Saturday night?) and Kakegawa. Tier three is where Fuji Ya sits. And if you’re wondering if there’s room for anything lower? Yes that would be Ikasu, the worst sushi I have possibly ever eaten.

B