From Monroe Avenue, Sakura Home looks like a pretty nondescript place - the building has been home to other restaurants over the years, including one of those massive Chinese buffet operations that you see scattered across the city. Step inside, though, and you immediately find yourself in a Disney-esque version of a swanky Japanese restaurant. There's a koi pond with plastic bamboo plants suspended above it, lower leaves trailing in the water. There's a wooden bridge over the pond that kids absolutely ache to run across back and forth (my 7-year-old dining companion did this several times). And there's a tasteful assortment of Japanese bric-a-brac tucked into museum-lit niches throughout the restaurant. In front of you is the bar, to the right the soft-lit dining room with a sushi bar at the rear. Through an archway is another dining room, this one holding an impressive number of hibachi-cooking stations (at least eight), all of which on two different visits were full of happy diners watching the teppanyaki chefs work their magic. The place feels friendly and convivial, with just the whisper of ersatz exoticism to it.

This is, co-owner Bin Sun, told me, entirely intentional. When Peter Sun and his original partner Mark Teng (who left to pursue other interests in December 2010) opened Sakura Home almost four years ago, they were trying to create a restaurant that would appeal to a wide spectrum of tastes and expectations, wrapping Japanese food in an American context - offering an experience along with a tasty meal. That is exactly what Sakura Home does. The teppanyaki chefs, many of whom have been working behind the flat-top for a decade or more, are among the best in town, combining cooking skills and showmanship in equal measure. The servers are equally good: attentive, knowledgeable, and incredibly quick. And the sushi chefs, while working with a very limited palette skewed toward the safer, more crowd-pleasing maki rolls, salmon, tuna, shrimp, and fake crab, turn out perfectly respectable food. (Although it must be said that the wasabi served at Sakura Home is so mild that I was reduced to chasing a tuna nigiri with a pearl sized chunk of the stuff to get the burst of heat and pungency I was looking for.)

Sushi and teppanyaki are becoming de rigueur in our area - the owners of Sakura Home own three other hibachi places in the city, and there are at least four others out there. Stripped of these, Sakura Home's menu still has some pleasant surprises for those who have become jaded with onion volcanoes and airborne bits of shrimp. If, for instance, you want the pleasure of table-top cooking, but also crave the intimacy of fondue, you could try cooking your own dinner on a smoking hot piece of volcanic rock. Volcanic rock cooking is a gimmick - sort of a take on Korean tabletop barbecue without the open flame - but it's a fun one. A thick square of rock is heated to about 750 degrees, scattered liberally with coarse salt and delivered to your table along with an assortment of vegetables and your choice of three different cuts of steak.

The least expensive, and to my mind the tastiest, of these is listed on the menu as "Asian marinated steak" (probably skirt steak or even top round, although it's hard to tell; $22). This beef has spent a long, long time in a marinade of garlic, ginger, and soy sauce, along with what tastes like a bit of five-spice powder - the salty liquid soaking deep into the meat. Toss the meat onto that piece of hot rock - with an angry hiss and a puff of steam - flip it in a minute or less to brown the other side, and what you'll have is a delicious piece of barbecued meat without the mess and effort of firing up the grill.

As with many of these table-top cooking methods, things get more interesting as the meal progresses. Marinade and meat juices combine on the hot stone, caramelizing into a sort of glaze that pleasantly seasons the broccoli, zucchini, and sweet red pepper that you'll inevitably drag through it. Near the end of the meal, I actually scraped the rock, transferring this tasty goo onto a pile of rice so it wouldn't be wasted.

Sakura Home is also a surprisingly good place to drop in for lunch. Most Japanese lunch boxes tend toward the meager end of things - an entree, some sort of salad, perhaps a small maki roll of tuna or salmon. Sakura Home's version is a three-course meal: miso soup, an iceberg lettuce salad topped with the restaurant's version of the traditional ginger salad dressing (this is more like a ranch dressing), a California roll, three adorable fried shrimp shumai, and your choice from the 10 entree options ($7.99-$13.99).

Feeling a bit sushi-ed out one afternoon, I decided on that refuge of the sashimi-phobic, beef negimaki ($9.99). I was glad that I did. Normally the dish is little more than minute steak wrapped around some scallions, grilled, and then doused with teriyaki sauce. Sakura Home's version is wonderful: thinly sliced and pounded pieces of good-quality beef wrapped around scallions, cooked just so, and then dressed with a luxuriously thick sauce that positively glistens with butter. The beef is tender, the sauce rich, and lunch is substantial enough to satisfy even the heartiest appetite.

It bears repeating that Sakura Home is an unapologetically Americanized version of Japanese food. It celebrates the Walt Disney version of Japanese cuisine that it presents, and does an excellent job of it. It seemed somehow appropriate, though, that on my final visit to the restaurant, the soundtrack to my lunch was a Muzak version of "When You Wish Upon a Star."

To find Sakura Home in City Newspaper's online Restaurant Guide - including a map, user reviews, and more - click here.

Sakura Home

2775 Monroe Ave.

288-8130, sakurahomerestaurant.com

Monday-Saturday 11 a.m.-10 p.m. (closed 2:30-4:30 p.m.), Sunday 1-10 p.m.