Bringing Sushi to Japan.(Brief Article)

Inside the sleek Rainbow Roll Sushi restaurant, a bartender mixes cocktails while sushi chefs expertly concoct colorful rolls. A waitress leads young, hiply dressed customers to a long table lit from underneath. They pore over menus printed in Japanese and English, as at any trendy new sushi restaurant in London, New York or L.A. And that's what's so striking: this one's in central Tokyo, where "sushi" and "trendy" have never gone together before.

Since the Edo period in the 1800s, Japanese have generally regarded sushi as a simple meal of raw fish atop rice, consumed quickly at an informal counter. According to traditionalists, the fare should consist only of vinegared rice topped with fresh raw fish, shellfish, fish eggs or cooked eggs, served with hot green tea and pickled ginger. Japan's revolving sushi bars, popularized during the '70s, are about as avant- garde as the traditionalists get. But now comes a place like Rainbow Roll Sushi, which opened last September with what its developers call a "new 21st-century style of sushi dining." And that style is about as far from Tokyo as you can get.

Yoko Shibata, the founder of Rainbow Roll Sushi, first discovered American-style sushi--complete with mayonnaise and zucchini--a decade ago as a college student in Chicago, where she worked as a waitress in a suburban Japanese restaurant. "The way the customers enjoyed sushi there was very different from the way the Japanese people eat sushi," Shibata recalls. "It was like dining on health food leisurely in a posh restaurant."

The memory stuck with her even after she returned to Tokyo. There she joined WDI Corp., which franchises such American institutions as Tony Roma's and Hard Rock Cafe. Then last March, Shibata presented her company with a plan for a totally new sushi restaurant, and her idea was accepted. Her restaurant offers a variety of appetizers, such as oyster shooters and white shrimp cocktails, as well as 18 original rolls, which cost between $6 and $10 a plate. Philadelphia Roll comes with smoked salmon, cucumber, cream cheese and scallion wrapped inside rice rolls. The Dynamite Roll consists of scallops, flying-fish roe, red chili and mayonnaise. Nickson Roll was named for a frequent customer in Chicago who favored its combination of eel, cucumber, cream cheese and ...