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Whenever my husband's business associates from Tokyo visit, Sushi Matsumoto is our stop for at least one lunch and dinner.

On their first trip to Sushi Matsumoto, they were pleasantly astounded at the authentic style and traditional preparations of Lexington's only sushi bar. Among its typically Japanese attributes: Sushi Matsumoto is a fastidiously clean, well-organized, long, narrow restaurant that is family-owned, with parents, son and daughter participating in the cooking and serving of the simple, fresh, tasty and attractive foods. At the sushi counter, a display case separates chef Sam Matsumoto's work space and the patron's eating area, but it's possible to see the chef's moves and deft cuts, his access to ingredients and the plating.

THE MENU

Lunch menu specials from the sushi bar include appetizers of crab and vegetables with sweet vinegar (Kani-su, $7.95), mixed seafood and vegetables (Sunomono, $9.95), grilled tuna with ponzu sauce (Tuna Tataki, $10.95) as well as assorted pieces of sushi ($7.95) or sashimi ($8.95). Miso soup ($2.25), a tasty house salad seasoned with a ginger-miso and balsamic vinegar dressing ($2.25) and seaweed salad ($5.25) complete the starters.

The complete menu is divided into two parts with the top section featuring two pieces per order of sashimi (thin slices or small pieces of raw fish without rice) or sushi (raw or cooked fish or nonfish ingredients with vinegar-seasoned rice) with a price range of $1.50 for quail eggs to $7.80 for sea urchin.

On the sashimi menu, there is salmon, red snapper, sea urchin, tuna, flying fish roe, squid, octopus, sweet shrimp, fresh water eel and bean curd. There's also an egg custard (tamago, $3.95), a layered omelet that is sometimes used as a sushi topping. If you're going to try sashimi, it precedes the sushi course.

The lower section of the menu lists 30 sushi rolls with five or six pieces served per order. These "inside-out" rolls, known as uramaki, are hugely popular in North America and other places in the world, including Japan, and have a fish center wrapped in dry seaweed with rice on the outside. The California roll ($4.50) heads this list and features fish roe, crab, avocado, cucumber and rice.

EATING SUSHI

It's not necessary to eat sushi with chopsticks, especially if you're uncomfortable using them. It's permissible to use your clean hands or a fork. There are options, too, about mixing the wasabi, a potent root unrelated to horseradish, which comes on your plate as a pale green mound, with the soy sauce. It's up to you whether you mix the two or dip the sushi in the soy sauce and smear a little wasabi on it.

Each sushi is a complete little entity on its own, usually with a little wasabi included in the contents. Too much wasabi kills the flavor of the sushi.

Our Japanese friends taught me to use my chopsticks to turn the sushi on its side or upside down and dip the fish and rice parts into the soy sauce. The whole idea is to keep the seaweed dry and crisp -- moisture makes it soggy. (I don't always succeed in getting just the fish into the soy sauce, but at least I've tried.)

WHAT WE TRIED

There were six of us reviewing Sushi Matsumoto, four adults and two children close to the age of 10 who didn't want any sushi. Instead, the kitchen obliged them by making yakitori (grilled chicken skewers; $4.95), rice and shumai, or steamed dumplings, stuffed with parsley, shrimp and vegetables ($5). The youngsters enjoyed their meals with root beer and finished up with creamy, delicious green tea ice cream ($1.50) for dessert.

We adults began our meals with bowls of piping-hot miso soup containing tiny cubes of tofu and followed by small bowls of sesame-oil-dressed seaweed salad. We ordered several different sushi rolls with each type having five or six pieces per serving. These rolls included deep-fried shrimp tempura roll ($6.25); spider roll with deep-fried soft-shell crab, fish roe, cucumber, avocado, lettuce, spicy sauce, and rice wrapped in dry seaweed ($7.25); and a salmon avocado roll ($5.25). There were also dragon rolls, an inside-out California roll wrapped with fresh water eel and avocado ($10.95), and Rock 'n' Roll with tuna, salmon, avocado, cucumber, wasabi tobiko, and rice wrapped with dry seaweed ($10.95). The Philadelphia roll ($4.95) enfolds salmon, cream cheese, cucumber, green onion and rice wrapped with dry seaweed. The salmon skin roll ($5.95), also known in the sushi world as the BC or British Columbia roll, is a fantastic contrast of textures and holds crunchy broiled salmon skin, cucumber, avocado, green onion and rice wrapped with dry seaweed.

The men quaffed Ichiban beer ($7.25 each) while the women took pleasure in the flavor combination of California merlot ($4.25) with their sushi meals.

THE BOTTOM LINE

I'm an adventurous diner who enjoys getting to know the nuances of the world's great cuisines, including Japanese sushi. I'm eager to try whichever creations chef Matsumoto suggests.