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Veteran Bend restaurateur Matt Davis has had limited exposure to Japanese cuisine, but he has a keen understanding of the food-and-beverage business. And he’s counting on that to carry his new venture, Tomo Japanese Sushi, to success.

It was fewer than four months ago, in mid-March, that Davis and business partner Lorraine Jespersen bought the five-year-old south-side Bend restaurant from local entrepreneurs Howie and Aida Long after a courtship of a mere two weeks.

“It came to fruition way faster than we anticipated,” Davis said. And he admitted they’ve been playing catch-up ever since.

Davis is perhaps best known in Central Oregon as the proprietor of the Marz Planetary Bistro, a popular Bend restaurant that closed at the end of 2010. He has since been involved in several different ventures, but none, perhaps, with this learning curve.

“When it comes to the restaurant business, the basic principles are the same,” Davis said. “You must provide good service and quality food at a price that people find approachable. But we have had to learn Japanese ingredients in the same way that any server initially has to learn. We ask a lot of questions.”

Value is a key factor in his business approach, Davis said. “At Marz, I wanted people to come every week. That’s the same strategy I have here.”

Nice ambience

Davis credited young head chef Emmerson Jespersen, Lorraine’s son, with aiding in the transition.

“To be perfectly honest, he has had more experience in the world of Japanese cooking than we did,” he said. “He worked at Tomo before Lorraine and I knew we were interested.”

Grant Miyashiro, formerly of Trattoria Sbandati, is the No. 2 man in the kitchen.

“You’re only as good as your staff,” Davis said. “It’s a cliché, I know, but I mean that. I think we have a pretty solid staff.”

The appearance of the restaurant — located in a plaza next to the Southside Pub, on S. Third Street near Murphy Road — hasn’t changed a lot with the new ownership. The atmosphere remains bright and inviting, with tables set against a south wall made up of bamboo poles that have been artistically arranged against a lime-green background.

A polished-pine sushi bar has been slightly extended in length and a traditional, bamboo-matted tatami room at the rear of the restaurant has been enlarged. It’s a great place for a private party of up to six, but it’s equally perfect for a romantic dinner for two.

Pros and cons

A restaurant that includes the word “sushi” in its name had best cement its reputation with the highest quality of that Japanese delicacy.

Tomo has done so. A big reason is that the rice is right. Proper sushi rice, called “sushi-zu,” is made from short-grained white Japanese rice, which gets sticky when steamed and holds together well. It gets its particular flavor from a blend of rice-wine vinegar, sugar and salt that is sprinkled upon the rice and folded into the mix for immediate use.

In its earlier incarnation, although the fish was always fresh, Tomo’s rice was bland and not as cohesive. Upon investigation, Emmerson Jespersen told me this was because it had been made with white vinegar rather than rice-wine vinegar.

“Rice wine definitely provides the flavor,” Davis said. “We’ve been trying to keep the same recipes, yet change what needs to be changed.”

One change yet to be made at Tomo is improving the recipe for tempura batter. The batter that encased a shrimp and several vegetables (broccoli, asparagus, sweet potato and shiitake mushroom) on my midday bento, a combination plate, was very heavy and greasy.

At its best, the deep-frying technique should produce a crispy yet delicate taste. The best Japanese chefs make a simple, light batter of flour, cold water and egg yolks. They dip seafood and veggies into that batter and flash-fry them in hot vegetable oil. The food comes out steaming, sweet and tender, with an almost ethereal crust — never thick and doughy.

The sushi menu

“The tempura is definitely something that needs to be worked on,” said Davis. “But I think it works (as it’s now prepared) when it’s done in a roll.”

Davis referred to his restaurant’s sushi menu, which offers several tempura specialty rolls to complement the usual roster of nigiri (raw fish atop seaweed-wrapped rice) and maki (fish and other ingredients rolled with rice) sushi. Tomo’s tempura rolls feature salmon, tuna, shrimp and even sliced beef, blended with other ingredients and deep-fried in batter.

To be honest, I didn’t sample any of these. But my dining companion and I did enjoy several maki rolls including the Sugar Daddy, which featured tempura shrimp along with spicy tuna, asparagus, avocado, tobiko (flying-fish roe) and unagi (eel) sauce. I’ll agree with Davis: The heavier tempura batter on the shrimp did add extra texture to the roll.

My friend and I also feasted on a Spider Roll, with soft-shell crab, avocado and cucumber, and several nigiri, including hamachi (yellowtail tuna), maguro (ahi tuna), izumidai (snapper) and creamy scallops. In every case, we found the fish fresh and delicious. And service was friendly and reliably efficient.

For the sushi lover, there’s no better time to visit Tomo than on a Monday night, when traditional sushi (but not specialty rolls) is marked down to half price. The restaurant begins to fill at 4 p.m., and by 5:30, there may be a line out the door.

Cooked entrees

At a prior lunch, we had focused not on sushi but on other Japanese dishes. Both the food and the service, on this occasion, were inconsistent. Our orders were simple, but it seemed to take a very long time to prepare a simple bento plate and a bowl of ramen soup.

We had a couple of dishes to start. Miso soup was satisfactory but certainly not outstanding. We didn’t love a generous cucumber salad, dressed with light vinegar and served with a sprinkle of black sesame seeds.

My companion’s ramen, a hearty noodle soup, was the sort of dish one enjoys in Japan on cold winter days. It had plenty of protein in the form of sliced pork belly and a hard-boiled egg, along with shiitake mushrooms, carrots, basil and onions. Traditional seasonings added spice.

My teriyaki chicken bento — so named for the divided plate in which the meal is served — was highlighted by the tender chicken, lightly grilled, drizzled with dark sweet soy sauce and sprinkled with white sesame seeds. It came with white rice, three slices of a California roll (cooked crab, avocado and cucumber) and the aforementioned tempura, along with an interesting dipping sauce.

We shared a bowl of tuna poke, an especially delicious addition to the menu. Marinated yellowfin tuna was cubed and tossed with soy sauce and sesame oil, avocado and a dash of chilies. Tomo presented it on a bed of crispy chow mein noodles — not particularly Japanese, but a nice addition for the “crunch” value.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com