First there was I Love Mr. Sushi, lovable for its name alone, but also the local introduction of chef Yoshi, who happened to be a very good sushi chef and an unpredictable polyglot, spewing multilingual songs, jokes and perhaps sometimes gibberish as he sliced through the fish.

Then about five years ago, Yoshi — given name Yoshio Aoshi — and his business partner Anny LeSeure moved west to a strip center on Clarkson Road, giving the restaurant Yoshi's name. Yoshi was a stickler for his fish, and his sushi list was generally half as long as many places in town.

Late last year, Yoshi announced that he would be returning to Japan for an unspecified period of time. The restaurant was renamed MoMoYama, and it has apparently even changed sushi chefs again since then, now under the direction of one who goes by the name of chef Tai.

On the positive side, we grazed through a large variety of sushi and sashimi and detected the same dedication to freshness that Yoshi had always demanded. One of my litmus tests for a sushi joint is usuzukuri, sashimi cut into very thin slices, usually artistically arranged, and served with ponzu, a citrus-enhanced soy sauce. Most local places offer it only on request, but MoMoYama has five varieties on the menu.

We tried the combo ($11.95), a grouping of the four single fish — tuna, salmon, yellowtail and "white fish" — offered in individual orders. The slices weren't quite as razor-thin as those from Nobu and other veteran sushi chefs in town, but they were acceptable, and the combination of colors wrapped into a flower-petal shape in the middle with flat slices radiating from it made for a distinctive presentation. Due to a slight language barrier, we never got a good answer as to what the "white fish" was, although in the former days, white fish was an alternative name for amberjack.

We were also pleased to see that the sushi list continued to include out-of-the-ordinary items, in this case greenlip mussel ($2), conch ($2) and a memorable baby octopus ($2), much more tender than the standard sliced-tentacle tako version and striking because it's served whole on the rice cake.

Although I view elaborate rolls as gaudy sushi, they're a necessity in the local market, and MoMoYama has dozens of them, ranging from variants on the classic tekkamaki (tuna roll) and yellowtail roll to ornate inclusions of fish in tempura to another new roll that seems to be de rigueur on the high end: a lobster roll ($20.95). With lobster prices as low as they are this year, I'm surprised this item hasn't dropped in price.

The margarita roll ($8.95) added green onion, cucumber, fish roe and a spicy sauce to the basic yellowtail roll, and although I couldn't figure out the etymology of the name, the flavors and textures melded nicely, and the spicy sauce wasn't as overwhelming as I've had at other places.

The shiro uki roll ($7.95) was only fair; it used the ubiquitous "white fish" in a cooked form with caviar, green onion and mayonnaise, and that final ingredient over-moistened the seaweed wrap.

Among the appetizers, we tried the Monkey's Brain ($7.95), a fish-stuffed portobello cap that's been infiltrating local sushi restaurants. It was a decent shared appetizer, but it went afield of both the Japanese theme and the sushi theme. The kamikase salad ($7.95) piled a fair portion of thinly sliced scallop, shrimp and octopus among lettuce, cucumber and shredded daikon, but this lost points for using fake crab instead of the real stuff.

The atmosphere is still bright and inviting, but Yoshi's absence is tangible from an audio perspective. The new chef and his assistants work diligently and banter with the customers sitting at the sushi bar, but the random chatter is missed, at least for those of us who enjoyed a floor show with our sushi.