It must have taken a lot of imagination in 1983 for an immigrant from Kobe, Japan, to open an authentic Japanese restaurant in Pittsburgh. Some of us might remember with difficulty those days before we had ever heard the word sushi or shopped for wasabi powder for our own kitchens or brought home the now-familiar plastic boxes containing the little disks of raw fish or vegetables wrapped in rice and dried seaweed and sold in supermarkets.

	Sushi chef Taku Okumura at Kiku Restaurant in Station Square. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

Today sushi is omnipresent, but in 1983 it was pretty much uncharted territory. Raw fish and rice had to be a very tough sell to anyone other than a few Pittsburgh college students homesick for their Asian roots. At least in Western Pennsylvania, Japanese cuisine had almost no "built-in market." Andy Kikuyama was a man before his time.

As new food trends eventually emerged and Pittsburghers developed more esoteric tastes, Kikuyama's Kiku Restaurant was primed and ready. This charming restaurant in Station Square is modeled on an authentic Japanese tea house. From the wooden facade with roof overhang to the shoji-covered windows and the fabric panels hanging in the doorway, Kiku is pure Japanese aesthetic.

On entering, one checks one's stress at the door and enters a world of calm and serenity. The soft lighting, soothing music and white tablecloths automatically bring on a Zen-like state for the diners. No sounds from the neighboring Hard Rock Cafe penetrate here. The room is dominated by the sushi bar, where three expert sushi chefs with an aggregate of 75 years of experience silently create more than 50 varieties of sushi. Each piece is made to order with fresh ingredients. Real sushi devotees prefer to sit at the bar and watch the chefs as they artfully prepare each piece.

		Kiku Station Square Pittsburgh, PA 15219 412-765-3200 Basics: Authentic Japanese restaurant with classic country inn menu and sushi bar. Waitstaff knowledgeable and helpful in understanding Japanese menu and ingredients. Lunch served Tuesdays through Fridays, 11.30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 3 p.m. Dinner served Mondays through Thursdays, 5 to 10 p.m.; Fridays, 5 to 11 p.m; Saturdays, 4:30 to 11 p.m.; Sundays, 4:30 to 11 p.m. Prices: Appetizers, $5-$20; entrees, $10.50-$25; desserts, $3-$6.75. Interesting sake is available by the glass from $5.50-$8.75, Japanese beer from $4.50-$6.75 (22-ounce bottle). Full bar service, smoking permitted in bar. All major credit cards accepted. Wheelchair access. Parking in lot at Station Square with partial validation.

There are four basic categories of classic sushi, each served with a dipping sauce made from a soy sauce base. Temaki is a cone-shaped piece of dried seaweed filled with raw fish or vegetables or a combination of both ($4.75 to $5 per piece). Maki sushi is a roll of rice with fish or vegetable or both in the center, wrapped in seaweed and cut into six slices ($4 to $5.50). Reverse roll has the fish and vegetable in the center and is instead wrapped in rice and cut into six pieces ($5 to $7.50). Nigiri sushi is a small mound of hand-molded rice topped with a slice of cooked or raw fish ($2 to $4.50 per piece). This is considered the ultimate in sushi artistry with the choice of fish and its preparation showing the skill and training of the chef.

Kiku's chefs do not disappoint. Sushi aficionados claim that it takes 10 years for a chef to learn to make sushi rice (short-grain Japanese rice cooked to the perfect consistency and seasoned with rice wine vinegar and sugar) before he even embarks on his fish training!

Sashimi is thin slices of the same raw fish used in sushi but served with steamed rice. Both of these presentations are seasoned with wasabi, a Japanese horseradish that is dried and ground into a green powder, which is reconstituted with water into a paste consistency. It has a potent, hot, nasal-passage-clearing piquancy that balances the blandness of the rice. This is rounded out with paper-thin slices of pickled ginger, another source of heat and sharpness.

For those who prefer their food cooked, the Kiku menu is rounded out with a panoply of familiar Japanese specialties such as teriyaki grilled steak, chicken or swordfish ($13 to $18), or the familiar sukiyaki, which was the first Japanese dish I prepared in my own kitchen in the 1960s when it was fashionable to invite friends over for a curry dinner, fondue or some other "international" fare. Sukiyaki is thinly sliced steak cooked in a steaming broth of soy sauce and sake ($21). Shabu shabu, another cooked beef entree, consists of sliced strip steak, noodles, bean curd, mushrooms and leafy green vegetables, all presented raw with a boiling pot of broth. This is placed on the table and the diners cook their own meal by dipping the ingredients into the hot broth and letting them simmer before ladling them onto their plates ($21). This was another big hit with '60s brides, who even added the special copper or iron pot to their wedding registry lists.

The extensive appetizers touch both familiar and unfamiliar ground. My favorite is gyoza, the Japanese version of pot-stickers. This is a pan-fried dumpling stuffed with chicken and vegetables and served with a light soy-based dipping sauce ($6.50 for four pieces). On the unfamiliar side, you might try kijiki, broiled seaweed with vegetables ($5); or beef tataki, seared beef thinly sliced and served with a mound of shaved white radish and a dipping sauce ($8.50).

A good test of any Japanese restaurant is its tempura, and here, too, Kiku does not disappoint. The tempura platter consists of two giant shrimp and slices of sweet potato, zucchini, green beans and broccoli dipped in a light batter and deep fried to crispy perfection. When properly prepared, the icy temperature of the ingredients and batter when plunged into hot oil for only a brief moment doesn't allow the oil to penetrate and instead puts a crispy puff around the fish and vegetables. The presentation at Kiku is particularly appealing as the shrimp and vegetables are arranged on a base of tempura-battered strips of carrot and onion, all topped with a lacy fan decoration of what turns out to be raw spaghetti dipped in batter and fried.

Soups in Japan are a meal. Soba (buckwheat) noodles in a rich broth topped with tempura shrimp make a satisfying dinner and could even pass the South Beach Diet guidelines since buckwheat has a relatively low glycemic index ($10.50).

The bar has a fine selection of Japanese beer and sake as well as the usual wines and other alcoholic drinks.

Desserts as we know them are not part of the Japanese diet, and although Kiku makes a stab at Asian-influenced sweets, none are worth the calories. Kiku's homemade green tea ice cream has neither eye nor taste appeal ($3). Tempura ice cream? Vanilla ice cream is rolled in Japanese bread crumbs, quickly deep-fried and topped with sweet red bean sauce ($6). I'll bet they've never eaten that in Tokyo!

This quiet spot tucked into a busy city mall is a lovely place to immerse oneself in classic Japanese food. This is not the trendy fusion of Asian with other influences, but the food one would find in a small, country inn in Japan.