By NEVA TRENIS

THE FREE LANCE–STAR

ASIA CAFÉ 840 Warrenton Road, near the Wawa gas station in Stafford County Phone: 540/371-2227 Hours: Daily 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Price ranges: Sushi—$3 to $11 Appetizers—$1 to $5 Beer—$2.50 to $3.25 Lunch entrées—$4.25 to $5.25 Dinner entrées—$6 to $18 Atmosphere: Asia Café is a family-friendly place with a relaxed and relaxing dining room. The restaurant delivers within about a five-mile radius of the shop, and food is available for take out. Regulars are often greeted by name, and some of the customers seem to know each other from previous visits to the restaurant. Payment: Major credit cards accepted.

Colors are bold at Asia Café: yellow daikon radish, emerald seaweed salad, glimmering black nori tying bundles of crimson tuna.

And it is not just the sushi—Chinese vegetables are quick sautéed to brilliant green. Even the restaurant’s walls are deep red.

In some ways, Asia Café is your standard Chinese restaurant, with all the Americanized offerings. But fresh ingredients and good sushi give the restaurant on U.S. 17 in Stafford County enough of an edge to set it apart.

On a recent weeknight, I ordered a spider roll ($7), one of my favorite selections at Asia Café.

In the kitchen, the cook deep fries a soft-shell crab then delivers it to the sushi chef, who deftly rolls it with cucumber matchsticks, sticky rice and sheets of toasted nori seaweed. The log is sprinkled with tiny orange roe, drizzled with a sweet, amber sauce and served.

For a Virginian, this treatment of soft-shell seemed strange when I first saw it on a menu, but I am glad that I got over my qualms. Try it with a Japanese Kirin beer (small $3.25, large $5.25) and you may be won over, too.