Dining Out: Dinner at Bonita's Tokyo Bay has peaks and valleys

Ethnic restaurants used to intimate a lot of people, who questioned what to order and how to deal with the foreign staff. But at least in small towns — like Bonita Springs and Naples — much of the angst has disappeared, particularly in terms of Asian cuisine.

Unlike metropolises such as New York City and Los Angeles, local menus are generally geared to American tastes. (At virtually all the popular area eateries, nobody has to deal with daunting dishes like mazuku, which features tiny marinated strands of seaweed, salted bonito intestines or firm-textured pickles made from burdock roots.)

Tokyo Bay at 124880 U.S. 41 in Bonita, is a case in point.

Yes, the various dining venues — sushi bar, cocktail lounge, hibachi rooms and the conventional dining room — have a soothing, Occidental ambience. The interior design boasts a sophisticated air, with gleaming dark woods and rice paper touches.

The entrance, in fact, sets the tone, featuring gushing waterfalls cascading into landscaped pools. It's a hushed and peaceful setting, albeit steps away from traffic-clogged Tamiami Trail.

Once inside, however, you'll be quickly reminded that you're in the good, old USA, reading a highly Americanized menu and listening to the highly Americanized music of singer/pianist Michael Kelley-Moore, who sits at the baby grand Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 9:30 p.m.

The evening we were there, his repertoire was based on Billy Joel and Johnny Mathis hits, with some Sam Cook and Chicago thrown in.

This is not "Teahouse of the August Moon" but that's OK. It's a nice restaurant that appears to be doing a booming business even now that off-season is here.

It is not, alas, a great restaurant. Throughout the evening, we experienced peaks and valleys in food quality as well as service — which was kind and caring but agonizingly slow.

We had no argument with the impeccably fresh sushi, though. We were off to an excellent start with a platter that included California rolls with tobiko caviar and black and white sesame seeds for crunch. The Unagi freshwater eel with barbecue sauce, considered by many connoisseurs to be the bellwether of good sushi, was also superb.

In the beverage department, we enjoyed icy cold bottles of Kirin beer ($5), which came with chilled Pilsner glasses and a flavorful apple martini, somewhat overpriced at $9.

An order of shrimp tempura ($5.75) wasn't as impressive as the sushi. Decorated with a generous handful of deep-fried and slightly greasy cellophane noodles, the result was bland and doughy. I could barely taste the shrimp.

Another tempura pick, soft shell crab ($13) with ponzu sauce, suffered a similar fate. Again, the batter could have been lighter and more flavorful and the crab was unfortunately mushy, perhaps from spending too long in the freezer.

A cup of soup, actually a weak chicken broth with two slivers of fresh mushroom, also disappointed.

Yakitori ($5.25) was a better choice. The skewered chicken, was tasty although nothing special. A few pineapple chunks would have enhanced the preparation.

The combination shrimp and scallop entrée — which included the aforementioned sushi for a total of $25 — was a decent-size serving of seafood, but it suffered because of an unremarkable sauce. Nicely prepared baby corn, squash and mushrooms came on the side.

Desserts are rarely a big deal in Japanese restaurants and nothing on the brief menu — vanilla ice cream, orange sherbet, tempura cheesecake — tempted our tastebuds.

In retrospect, based on this singular dining experience, I think I'd restrict future Tokyo Bay visits to the sushi bar, filling up on their better-than-average sushi or sashimi raw fish rolls or a few of the cooked offerings, which include tuna or beef tataki and smoked salmon.