For the first week of the New Year, we thought it appropriate to have a week of First Bites.
Here is my first report. Watch this week for reports on Sumay, an upscale Indian restaurant in Puyallup's South Hill, and Merende in downtown Tacoma. Know of a new restaurant someone from the TNT Diner crew should check out? E-mail tntdiner@thenewstribune.com.

Sushi World
Where: 729 River Road, Puyallup
Phone: 253-445-5260
Menu overview: Heavy on maki, more than 50 rolls.
Price: $ (rolls and entrees under $14)

A sushi restaurant with a menu of 50-something maki in Puyallup. "Finally." It was my first thought when sitting down at a deserted Sushi Town. The restaurant was on its third day of business when I ate there early last week. The manager told us they are still tweaking things, including the menus.

There just was one thing missing: customers.

I bet it will catch on soon, though, once Puyallup diners find that they can get maki galore.

It’s unusual for Puyallup to land a sushi-centric restaurant – especially one that has no teriyaki on the menu.

[More:]

Yes, that’s right, a startling revelation – a Japanese restaurant in Puyallup, with NO teriyaki on the menu (or katsu, or yakisoba). I was shocked and amazed, too. I even tested them and asked for teriyaki (not that I would eat it, it’s the equivalent of eating chain food for me). They said, “Sorry, don’t have it.”

A handful of nigiri choices and a few baked dishes do grace the menu (and gyoza and udon), but the menu is really just maki – more than 50 different kinds of rolls (close to 60 if you count the funky menu options on the back page).

Puyallup has a few other restaurants – such as Happy Bento in South Hill and Ichiban near downtown Puyallup – with lots of good sushi on the menu, but Sushi World sets itself apart with an exclusive maki menu and little else.

Sushi World also sets itself apart from the competition by not taking itself too seriously. It goes kitschy with names of several rolls and the menu is even laced with PG-13 profanity, which is quite a departure for a restaurant in Puyallup (I'm as shocked as you are).

There are a few ways to dine at Sushi World. Diners can sit at the counter and order all-you-can-eat sushi, which seemed an economical choice at $17.95 per person. It looked like a decent selection of nigiri and maki on the all-you-can-eat menu, but I left that untested. Instead, I sat in the dining room and ordered maki from the lengthy menu. With more than 50 choices, it was quite a menu stroll.

Ryan’s Special ($13) was a typical shrimp tempura roll with the addition of spicy crab, cucumber and topped with slices of avocado and yellowtail tuna. The shrimp was fresh, but I was pretty sure the crab, which was chopped finely and mixed with a creamy, spicy sauce, was of the krab variety. Hmmmm. A follow-up call to manager Patty Won confirmed that they do use imitation crab in their rolls. She said diners should ask for which rolls have real crab (I'll certainly ask next time).

The Hawaiian Roll ($10.50) is a must order. The texture was silky and creamy, but with just enough interior interest from crunchy vegetables. Raw tuna was rolled with cucumber, avocado, yamagobo, and scallion and it was topped with more raw tuna. The yamagobo, Japanese pickled burdock root, added a really distinctive crunch and a sharp, but not distracting, flavor in contrast to the creaminess of the tuna. It was nicely presented, like the other rolls, on a black wooden sushi board.

A note about the rolls: they may be more expensive than a Puyallup sushi restaurant should dictate, but they are rather large. The Hawaiian roll was fat and happy with 10 slices.

From the fried menu, The Who’s Your Daddy creation ($13) falls solidly in the kitsch column. It was shaped like an oversized shrimp, coated in a golden brown crust, and deep fried. Inside was shrimp, chopped fish, cream cheese – served with a spicy sweet sauce. It was a hot gooey mess. Watch out for dripping hot cream cheese.

Also from the fried menu, the gyoza ($6.50, with rice) were as perfect as gyoza can be. I liked the crunchiness of the fried appetizer, and the pronounced ginger flavor made it a touch better than the typical potsticker.

For a next visit, I have my eye on the Johnny Special ($13), a spicy soft shell crab and topped with albacore and a garlic ponzu sauce. Also intriguing was the Something Wrong #7 ($13), a roll with spicy soft shell crab, cucumber and topped with five different kinds of fish. It sounds very … interesting.

Note: For sushi newbies: I use the phrase maki generically to describe long rolls, those cylinder-shaped rolls stuffed with raw and cooked fish, vegetables and sometimes other less conventional ingredients. They’re wrapped up inside rice or sometimes nori seaweed wrappers.