No matter which Osushi Restaurant outpost you're at, there's usually a lot going on outside the big windows—its Harvard Square and Back Bay locations mean that the streets are full of students, shoppers, and other passers-by. Inside, however, tea lights take over for streetlights, casting flickering silhouettes against a room marked by studied simplicity: clay-red walls, round mirrors, a few elegantly drawn Japanese characters in frames at the Back Bay location, and a sleek red-and-gray color scheme in Harvard Square.

It's an atmosphere designed for intimacy. The sushi bar and small two-tops make it easy to clink sake cups with a dining partner. (Staff believe the sake list is the longest in the city, though it's hard to find reliable statistics.) The menu is equally concise, enough to make a fun pre-dinner challenge of reciting it in one breath. There are seafood and vegetable starters seasoned with unusual spices such as green-tea salt and pickled-wasabi vinaigrette, tempura platters, and about a dozen rolls. These are tradition-minded but not averse to an experimental flourish here and there—all the better to showcase the work of an executive chef who, as the Boston Globe wrote in 2004, is "obviously picky about his fish."