Restaurant of the Week: Ojiya

Ojiya, 4183 Chino Hills Parkway, Suite J (at Pipeline), Chino Hills

I ate at Ojiya last week but saved the review for this week. It's yet another of the sit-down restaurants in Chino Hills that the masses seem unfamiliar with. But it got good reviews on Yelp, so I met up with a couple of CHills friends for dinner.

Ojiya is in a strip mall -- it's a couple of doors from Peking Deli, a Chinese restaurant reviewed favorably here a while back -- and once you're inside you forget you're in a strip mall. It's a cozy interior with touches of bamboo and with a serious-looking sushi bar. I felt like I was in Little Tokyo.

I ordered various nigiri sushi items, especially ones I rarely see elsewhere: Spanish mackerel, seared salmon, fatty albacore and large scallop, plus my baseline dish, the salmon skin cut roll. (I don't remember the individual prices but they added up to about $24.)

I'm confident in saying that Ojiya is the best sushi I've had in the 909. Then again, there's still Rokuan, another Yelp favorite in Chino Hills that is still on my list.

My friends enjoyed their food, a chicken teriyaki bowl and a salmon teriyaki/crunch roll combination plate. Our only complaint was the green salad of iceberg lettuce was boring. At least it was only $3 for me, and free for them with their meal.

We met up, by the way, at 6:30 p.m. on a weekday, and the place was mostly empty. It quickly began filling up. By 7:45, when we left, the dining room was full.