Mye Japanese Restaurant

The clearest argument for Mye is not made at the sushi bar. It is a fillet of black cod, marinated in miso and grilled slowly until the flesh gives, plated against California greens in a wasabi-miso dressing. It is a slab of USDA Prime rib-eye, sliced and char-broiled under a house grilling sauce. A Japanese restaurant in Old Oakville that draws its own name onto the menu — the Oh! Mye Roll, the Mye Gozen — can be mistaken for a sushi counter with ambitions. The kitchen is the other half of the story, and on most nights it is the more persuasive one.

The sushi side holds its own. The Oh! Mye Roll keeps things specific — sea bass tempura and asparagus rather than an overloaded tangle of fillings — and the Lobster Roll arrives with a crab dipping sauce. Sashimi and composed platters run alongside a Seafood Avocado Salad of shrimp, octopus, and squid in a ginger-yuzu dressing. Vegetarians get a real option in the Veggie Green Dragon Roll — yam tempura and cucumber under avocado — not an afterthought. But the menu keeps pulling toward the stove. There is Pork Shoulder Ramen built on medium-thick noodles, braised pork, a marinated soy egg, bamboo shoot, and bok choy; Chicken Teriyaki basted with the kitchen's own sauce; Unagi Donburi of barbecued eel over rice; and Mo's Drunken Chicken, a fried-chicken appetizer the menu will only describe as a secret recipe.