Hiroshi is elegant and minimalist, which here translates to boring and antiseptic. The floors are hardwood and the lines are simple, but the lone source of visual stimulation comes from a school of silvery metallic fish arranged on the plain wall. Otherwise, it’s a bit like the lunch cafeteria at a nice department store. Sit at the sushi bar and chat up the chefs for best results—and that goes for food, too. But it is kind of luck of the draw with regards to which sushi chef you sit in front of; you don’t get the same experience with the head guy as you do with the others.

If you do sit at a table, be prepared for variable service; some servers are knowledgeable and attentive while others are forgetful and largely absent. The food can often take an inordinately long time to come out.

Here, as with any other sushi place, you want to order omakase. But how exciting the choices are will vary with your chef. It helps to assert your love of uni gonads and fish heads. Nigiri sushi is mostly successful, fresh-tasting, and, crucially, served at the proper temperature, with judiciously vinegared sushi rice. Wild hamachi belly melts in the mouth, and madai (which is translated alternately as black snapper or sea bream) is astoundingly light and fresh. Cuttlefish, an option at one visit, was served with a shiso leaf whose flavor overwhelmed it somewhat, but the texture was good and bouncy without being cumbersome. Sea urchin is buttermilky and smooth.

Eating bluefin toro may not help us sleep at night—there’s just so darn little of it left—but here it’s done such justice, such a properly silky square of umami-fat, that we are willing to swallow the guilt (just not much of it). A zuke, or soup, of tuna tartare with dried egg, seaweed, and miso broth is great, and a lightly torched spicy salmon roll is pretty good. But stray too far beyond the traditional and it just gets annoying. We’re really unimpressed with the attempts at fusion here, for which you pay a mighty big premium. And the problem is that ordinary omakase might well bring some of those fusion disasters. Try emphasizing the “classic sushi” when you order. Desserts are no better.

Decent nigiri, yes. A full-stop restaurant firing on all cylinders, no.