Uchiko, the good cousin

The second time I pulled into Uchiko's parking lot, National Public Radio was interviewing Danish chef Rene Redzepi, whose Noma had just been called the greatest restaurant on earth. He's written this new Nordic cookbook. You know, with simple instructions (`submerge in liquid nitrogen') and everyday ingredients: sea buckthorn juice, hazelnut soil, birch stock.

Mmmm, pretense.

Nobody can cook from a book like that, but we like to look at the pictures. That's why we go to places like Uchiko, to do more than look at the pictures. To get a taste of powdered olives, pecan soil, fish caramel, tobacco cream - and maybe just a little bit of pretense.

The latest Zagat guide holds up Uchiko's opening in July as an example of high-end restaurants making a comeback nationwide. Locally, Uchiko's opening felt more like the logical extension of the explosively popular Uchi brand cultivated by chef-owner Tyson Cole. In fact, he'll tell you that in concept, Uchiko evolved from being a twin to Uchi to being something more like a cousin, with recognizable family traits but an identity of its own.

Forging Uchiko's identity has fallen to executive chef Paul Qui, who draws culinary inspiration as much from the Philippines (where he was born), Vietnam and Thailand as he does from Japan. Nowhere on the menu is Qui's presence felt more strongly than in a fried chicken dish called karaage ($16), with a crackling thin shell around impossibly tender meat, set off with a dish of green apple and pickled watermelon rind. Familiar textures with the exotic tang of street food. It's similar to a dish you'll find at Qui's East Side King food trailer behind the Liberty bar on East Sixth Street, the side venture he started with two fellow cooks from Uchi.

By his own account, Qui put together a kitchen staff at Uchiko that reflected his own humble beginnings as a walk-on fry-cook at Uchi. The ride's been bumpy. They hired more help than they needed in the beginning; one of those hires spun off and started an eclectic trailer on the East Side called Not Your Mama's Food Truck. The respected sushi chef they brought over from Uchi has left.

But the sushi bar at Uchiko carries on, carried in part by Qui's simple notion: `The beauty of a sushi piece is that you can give them that one perfect bite.' The best expression of that philosophy is a piece of Norwegian mackerel (shime saba, $4.50) with basil leaf and tiny slices of yellow tomato and truffle. It's a balance of land and sea in one bite: marine oil, acid, herbal grass, earth.

There are more `perfect bites' of sushi: Spanish white anchovy with lemon zest (boquerones, $4); salmon with mint, preserved lemon and yogurt (sake, $3.50); seared beef tongue with sweet fish caramel (gyutan, $4); simple freshwater eel grilled to a fine-edged crunch (unagi, $3). We lost our balance only on a piece of hamachi overwhelmed by jalapeño ($4.50).

An early Uchiko menu had little crossover from Uchi, but a few dishes have crept over: maguro sashimi with goat cheese and Fuji apple ($18), the popular fried Shag Roll with salmon and sun-dried tomato ($14), a hamachi dish with Thai peppers and orange ($18).

Some migration seemed inevitable. And although Uchiko can't be called independent of its crosstown sister, neither is it a clone. The dishes exclusive to Uchiko's menu rise (and occasionally fall) on their own.

Philip Speer is the pastry chef for both restaurants, with a different lineup for each, still working as comfortably with nontraditional elements (tobacco, tomato, corn) as he does with chocolate and caramel. His tobacco cream dessert ($9) numbs the mouth like a pouch of Red Man chew, finishing with the sweet burn of scotch extinguished and amplified by deep chocolate sorbet. It's aggressive to the same degree a dessert called `fried milk' ($9) is affable, loved by all for bringing together ice cream, fried pastry cream, a dusting of toasted milk and a hint of chocolate. Food geeks will praise its textures; you'll like it because it's fun.

One of Uchiko's best dishes is called koviche ($19), glowing white pieces of scallop with the light green sweetness of tomatillo and a sultry dusting of powdered olive, gilded like a stegosaurus with crunchy, snack-chip sails for scooping the flavors.