It’s easy to assume that those headed for a sushi bar are going to eat mostly raw fish. Not necessarily, I found, at Sushi ii, a little gem of a restaurant admired as much for its prix fixe kitchen menu as for its superb sushi.

I’m not talking typical izakaya fare either, but a full prix fixe menu that changes every week.

Proprietor and sushi chef Garrett Wong, a Tokkuri Tei alumnus who long dreamed of branching out on his own, initially wanted to establish a small menu of hot dishes to address the reality that not everyone at a sushi bar loves raw fish. Many are the accommodating friends of sushi enthusiasts and count on the presence of such cooked favorites as chicken karaage and sizzling steak and onions, though you won’t find these here.

Sabrina Saiki-Mita stepped in, initially to help launch the menu, but she’s not your typical izakaya chef. For one thing, she has an entirely separate career as a full-time flute teacher at Punahou School and a professor of music at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

If she was going to be in any kitchen, she was going to advance her own desire to promote local, organic, non-GMO produce and clean, steroid-free proteins.

"I was raised to eat healthfully, so my conscience won’t let me serve anything less," she said.

Although music is her No. 1 passion, Saiki-Mita has a long history in the kitchen, having been encouraged by her cook father when she was a child.

"It was a small town, so there was no kim chee or char siu bao, so I had to make my own," she said.

While there, she and a friend also catered music department events, and she didn’t realize it was something she missed until she met Wong while he was working at Natsunoya Tea House. She offered to make desserts for the tea house, and he took her up on the offer.

The banana dream pie and green tea panna cotta she developed at the time remain hits at Sushi ii, but before reaching them, there is a full menu to enjoy.

The restaurant’s hot menu started with a roster of a la carte specialties that kept growing. Due to time constraints and at the prompting of her sister Shereen, Saiki-Mita now creates the weekly menu with three- and four-course options, running about $45 to $55 per person. I’ve found that it’s possible to share one four-course prix fixe meal, augmenting it with Wong’s raw specialties, a combo made in heaven.

A recent menu started with ahi confit bruschetta, mounded with mozzarella, garlic-roasted tomatoes and sliced kalamatas and finished with basil, roasted garlic and olive-oil drizzle.

The three-course menu offered crabcake or grilled lamb options. The four-course menu included both dishes, the first an amazing, if small, quartet of jewel-size coconut-crusted crab cakes with small salad of mizuna, accented with fresh poha berries and finished with a mildly spicy lilikoi dressing.

The more substantial rosemary-garlic grilled lamb was geared toward bigger appetites, paired with eryngii mushrooms and green beans.

Hot specials might also include king salmon kama ($16) or rich and juicy hamachi kama (collar, $24).

Because the restaurant is small and popular, there can be waits for sushi, so timing proved to be serendipitous on my second visit when the fish started to arrive just as we were finishing up our second entree.

If you see any kind of snapper or whitefish with truffle ponzu (about $22) on the menu, get it. It’s a treat for both palate and eyes, beautifully fanned out to look like a sheer skirt.

Ignore the humor behind the 99-cent "Tantaran Roll" to get to the real deal of luscious hamachi sushi ($8) and one of the hottest spicy ahi rolls you’ll find on the island. Wong’s formula includes more fish than rice and two kinds of wasabi. On my visit, the one inside the sushi itself was much more potent than the grated version served on the side for making your dipping sauce. Watch out for that unless you like the shock up your sinuses.

Meals conclude with your choice of dessert. Unless they decide to create a sampler, you may just have to book several return trips to try the likes of pots de creme made with 70 percent Madre dark chocolate; vanilla bean panna cotta topped with your choice of matcha green tea sauce, fresh lilikoi or kumquat marmalade; banana dream pie; or Indian-style pineapple kulfi with macadamia lace cookies.

First-timers should start with the aptly named "dream" pie, a layered marvel of buttered puff pastry, homemade custard, pecan crumble with a light dusting of salt and sugar, slices of tart apple or custard bananas and fresh whipped cream from Naked Cow Dairy.

This week’s special menu will include Thai green curry fish and Saiki-Mita’s popular local beef sliders stuffed with gorgonzola and Naked Cow butter. The last time I had this, it was accompanied by crave-worthy sour cherry and caramelized onion ketchup that needs to be bottled so we can always have it.

She’s still working on the salad but is contemplating endive with mango, ricotta and shrimp with a papaya vinaigrette.

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Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.