Senju Sushi in Windsor offers a taste of Japan

Senju looks like a bento box. The small space is done up in blonde wood walls, with the rectangular room divided into cozy compartments by wooden half-walls. Accents

Udon Noodles at Senju are fragrant, filling and full-bodied. Photo by Carey Sweet.

include wood tables and chairs, and a wood sushi bar topped with a wood pagoda-style roof.

Even the accents look like shiso leaves lining a bento box – the seats, table insets, and carpets are hunter green. Overhead hang square-shaped paper lanterns.

And inside the downtown Windsor restaurant is what makes a bento box so appealing: a myriad of delicious dishes, in a rainbow of flavors, textures, temperatures and colors.

Perhaps that’s why, though sushi is front-and-center on the lengthy menu (77 rolls listed, plus endless special chef creations), I was first drawn to the bento box dinners. There are 13 choices ($17.50-$19.95), all anchored by tempura, a serving which could be a full meal in itself, brimming in a mound of green beans, two meaty prawns, huge knobs of squash and broccoli, and long, fat wands of sweet potato chunks and soft, steamy carrot.

After sipping a savory bowl of tofu-studded miso soup, you choose your bento components. There are the usual suspects: teriyaki meats, crispy meats in spicy sauce, and sashimi, plus a few Chinese-style recipes like lemon or ginger chicken, and walnut prawns. To round things out, the chef adds a generous green salad and a scoop of rice.

I lived in Tokyo for three years during my childhood, and one of my favorite dishes, then and now, is tonkatsu. Senju’s version ($14.25 a la carte/$17.50 bento box) is spot-on. The thick-sliced pork cutlet remains juicy beneath its thin, crisp-breaded shell, all the better to soak up drizzles of tangy katsu sauce.

Though Senju is tucked in a strip mall facing a busy street, you won’t notice it once you’ve settled in and are sipping your green tea or sake. Rice paper covers the windows, white Christmas lights twinkle above the peek-a-boo kitchen, and gentle Japanese string music strums in the background. Usually, chef-owner Koji or his wife Jou greet you, dressed in short kimono jackets and offering a slight bow.

A Dragon Roll at Senju with shrimp tempura & unagi. Photo by Carey Sweet.

Koji, who likely will prepare your sushi, has the basics covered — silky, succulent tuna nigiri (both maguro and premium o’toro); buttery yellowtail; spicy tuna rolls that take sinus-singe to a serious level; and California rolls that come packed with real, creamy crab, not that fake surimi. More interesting are the Jou rolls ($14), California-style models upgraded with poki tuna and tobiko, and the Dragon roll ($13.95) of shrimp tempura capped in salty epaulets of eel.

I’m not a big fan of American kitchen-sink style sushi, but Koji shines even with the weird stuff. A Tori roll is ($6.50) sacrilege for sushi purists, but it’s extravagant, tucking a plump chunk of fried chicken alongside crisp cucumber and cream cheese. It’s a mouthful to manage, but a worthwhile one, contrasting crunch and cream, silk and salt.

A Mango Tango roll ($10.50) is even better, layering lush hamachi, tuna, and sweet mango all prettily wrapped in soy paper. Don’t overlook the 49’ers roll ($13.50), meanwhile, because of its goofy name. The chef starts with a log of rice, and packs it plump with snow crab. Over this he drapes a sheer coverlet of salmon, slivered with transparent slips of lemon. Add in the yin and yang of brain-splitting fiery wasabi and salty soy sauce, and it’s riveting.

Senju also wins my heart for offering an entree that, while nothing fancy, isn’t all that common in Sonoma. That would be udon ($14.95), in fat tangles of white wheat noodles bobbing in soy-based broth. Fragrant, filling and full-bodied, the soup swims in a choice of chunks of Black Angus beef, tempura, or small but sturdy shrimp, scallops, mussels and cotton-candy-pink rounds of fish cake. You slurp, you splatter your shirt, you’re happy.

Other entrees are engaging — in particular the sea bass steamed with ginger mushroom sauce ($18.50), or the meaty teppan prawns sautéed on a sizzling platter ($16.95).

Senju cuts little creative swaths with appetizers. Fried tofu ($5.50) and crisp fried calamari ($8.50) are better bypassed for shiro maguro ($13), in a small but precious serving of albacore tuna sashimi, or amaebi ($7.50), jumbo raw prawn with the fried head served separately.

I’ve never been a big fan of dessert in Asian restaurants, either – green tea or mango ice cream ($4.50) just isn’t that special. But a Senju meal ends on a high note of mochi ice cream ($4.50), or roasted seed ice cream ($4.75), for intriguing smoky notes married with freeze.

A box? Senju may resemble one, and is certainly a master of the bento. But for a few recipes outside of the box, Senju delivers those very nicely, too.

Details: Senju Japanese Restaurant, 8960 Brooks Road South, Windsor, 707-836-1699, senjusushi.com.

For more information about restaurants in Windsor, visit http://windsor.sonomacounty.com.

The tonkatsu bento box is spot on. Photo by Carey Sweet.