Last year, Atlanta lost what many there considered its best Japanese restaurant. But the Big Peach’s loss is the Big Apple’s gain: Chef Sotohiro “Soto” Kosugi has brought his act to New York. His West Village restaurant, which opened in May, exudes the quiet confidence of a big fish. With no sign, its white facade is easily missed from the street, where it’s wedged between a taqueria and a shoe store; and inside, there’s hardly more fanfare — just a sushi bar, tables, and white walls. Even for a beloved third-generation chef, to come compete in the crowded Manhattan market is a bold move. Watching Mr. Kosugi work — hollowing out a lime with superhuman deftness, or arranging rice with his lean fingers — one has no doubt in his ability. Every night at the bar, sushi aficionados place their appetites in his hands, to the tune of an eight- or 12-piece chef’s-choice tasting menu ($48 or $58).

The rice is tender and impeccably fresh, as is an interesting selection of fish. In an unusual touch, the menu lists the provenance of each piece of sushi: bigeye tuna from Ecuador, fluke from Long Island, and scallops from Maine. These pieces can be educational: the contrast between freshly killed fluke ($8) and less freshly killed fluke ($5) is faint but intriguing. And they can be delicious, like the special Korean-style spicy tuna roll ($16), which comes wrapped in stunning white and green tiger-striped seaweed, and overstuffed with pear, pine nuts, and lush avocado. For the most part, though, little distinguishes this sushi from offerings on a similar tier around the city.

What makes Soto special is the rest of the menu, full of elaborate seafood dishes from the sushi bar and from the kitchen. There are chewy strips of raw surf clam ($10) soaked in sweet miso, tangled about with baby ginger, and served in that niftily dissected lime. The elements come together in a synergy of flavor and texture that shows the chef’s talent much more eloquently than even the best plain fish. Bright slices of salmon ($18), slightly cured to give their fat-striped flesh a little firmness, are dressed with the potent juice of Japan’s little udachi citrus, a brighter, keener alternative to lime.

A broiled miso-marinated filet ($14) was the traditional, rich black cod one night, but lush yellowtail the next — an interesting and arguably better alternative, with vivid marine flavor that the sweet and salty marinade drew out and complemented excellently. The luxurious pairing of lobster and sea urchin (uni) makes a dramatic appearance in a lotus-wrapped preparation in which the former, steamed just to the point of tenderness, is layered with a briny mousse of the latter ($28); but the duo is even more effective as the subtle basis for a rich miso broth ($10), to which the uni gives an orange cast and the lobster an ineffable sweetness.

Four slices of sea bream ($16) are “minute steamed” until fluffy and supple, and seasoned à la Chinois with ginger, soy, and scallions. The Soto rendition of chawan mushi, a savory steamed custard, is wonderfully delicate, with matsutake mushrooms and yuzu zest augmenting the mild seafood broth it’s made from.

At the end of the menu, one finds the largest and perhaps best dish: a whole deep-fried flounder for two people ($25). It ought to satisfy any appetite left hungry by the preceding courses, which can be skimpy for their price. The instruction came from the notoriously exacting chef that we were to eat it with our fingers, so we did, pulling hot swathes of moist flesh wrapped in salty, crisped skin straight from the fish to our mouths, with no need for a stopover in the sweet soy dipping sauce. The crunchy fins, delicious in their own right, do double duty as forks to scoop up the remnants of meat.

Two dozen sake choices and half that many Western wines back up the seafood nicely; I liked the Ugo no Tsuki ($28/300 ml) for its soft balance of fruit flavors, more complex than many daiginjo sakes.

Based solely on the cooking, Soto more than has what it takes to survive in this competitive environment. But given the extreme attention to detail in the food, the shoddiness of the restaurant’s service is baffling. Unfailingly polite, the servers are woefully ill coordinated with the kitchen, with each other, and even with their own earlier actions. One exchange went as follows:

Waitress: Are you done? Would you like anything else?

Us: Yes, we’d like the other several dishes we ordered from you just a few minutes ago.

Waitress: Which ones have I brought you so far?

Soto (357 Sixth Ave., between Washington Place and 4th Street, 212-414-3088).