This post is by DCist Food contributor Mike Roscoe

Sushi restaurants are everywhere. When you feel the need to indulge your appetite for fresh, clean, simple food, chances are there’s a sushi bar not too far away. So how to distinguish between them? Some feature pan-Asian fare where you can mix Chinese, Japanese and Thai cuisines to suit your mood, while others go high-class and offer extravagantly priced omakase tasting menus and expense-account-level sakes. But none of that for us. DCist went searching for a quiet, out-of-the-way, mom and pop sushi joint that serves traditional Japanese fare and wouldn’t look out of place on the back streets of Tokyo.

We found it at Sushi Sushi on Macomb Street, NW, directly across the street from another mom and pop spot, Two Amys. A soft, golden glow from rice paper lanterns drew us in from the street and we shook off the winter chill with a carafe of warm sake.

Everyone orders edamame for starters these days, so much so that they ought be offered gratis the way Chinese restaurants serve bowls of fried noodles. But, we paid for ours and got a nice, simple bowl of warm beans dusted with sea salt. Miso soup—big chunks of bean curd with slivers of soft nori swimming in a satiny broth—followed. Then, a delicate seaweed salad sprinkled with sesame seeds and tossed with robust and nutty oil prepared us for our entree.