Dana Rene Bowler / Star staff Oh! Sushi features such signature dishes as Sushi Combo, a 12-piece plate for $19.50.

Customers eat lunch at the new Oh! Sushi restaurant in Oxnard on a Thursday afternoon. On Monday nights, the restaurant offers half-price beer and sake.

Oh! Sushi is in an Oxnard shopping center where there's plenty of culinary competition. But on a Monday night, business was worthy of the exclamation point in the restaurant's name.

The compact sushi bar was filled and refilled, and most of the tables were occupied. Even the outside patio, dotted with colorful umbrellas for sunshine hours, had lured several guests into the evening chill.

The 6-month-old Japanese restaurant offers an extensive menu that also is colorful — and clear. From the many possibilities we quickly decided on two first courses that were new to us: clam soup ($7.50) and pokky (some call it poke) tuna ($9.50).

Our beverages of hot sake and beer were half-price the night we visited and, indeed, on all Monday nights, which was news that came as a pleasant surprise.

The pokky tuna, with its central ingredient described by our server as "not toro quality" but moderately fat tuna with good flavor, was a mini feast in itself. The substantial plate of rosy tuna chunks, seasoned with spicy seaweed salad ingredients and oil, was a promising start.

My clam-loving friend put a stamp of approval on the clam soup, which featured a cluster of tender little critters in a mild broth accented with slivers of red bell pepper.

There were so many other items we were tempted to taste that narrowing the list down was a challenge. We finally decided to order the Super Special Combo ($23.50), which in addition to four pieces of sushi and six of sashimi included one special roll, which we could choose from Oh! Sushi's list of 35. We picked the Oxnard Roll, in honor of where we were dining.

The sushi and sashimi were of uniformly good quality and attractively presented in a large box along with the Oxnard Roll.

The latter combines soft-shell crab tempura, crab meat and cucumber, with eel and avocado wrapping the plump exterior. The sweet sauce that often accompanies eel dishes was drizzled across the top.

We thought we'd wait until the ordered dishes arrived before deciding if we could comfortably add another item, like a basic maki roll, udon or tempura. But it turned out we had ordered the ideal amount of food for dinner for two, along with the shared Roppongi Banana dessert ($6.50).

Named after a Tokyo nightclub district, the banana dish was strikingly presented, with a circle of tempura banana cuts radiating out from a center of green tea ice cream topped with whipped cream and a cherry. Over the bananas were generous sprinklings of powdered sugar and chocolate sauce.

Among the dishes that we left unsampled on our visit were those that came with miso soup, salad and rice: chicken, beef, salmon and "oceano" teriyaki, barbecued short ribs, katsu, tempura, sesame chicken and spicy pork.

Yaki soba variations and udon and tempura combinations are available, along with a selection of rice bowls.

There also are lots more appetizers — agedashi tofu, yakitori, popcorn lobster and half-shell oysters among them — plus special rolls like the Love Love Roll (with scallop, spicy tuna and avocado wrapped with tuna, without rice in the blend). Lunch specials range from $8.50 to $12.50.

For diversions beyond the food, Oh! Sushi provides TV screens showing sports events. Piped-in music is not so loud as to drown out table conversations — or exclamations over the food.

— Rita Moran visits restaurants unannounced and pays for her meals. If you know of a new, unusual or just plain good restaurant, please contact her at ritamoran@earthlink.net.