Chef Fuyuhiko Ito seems like an easygoing guy. His body language is loose and limber behind the sushi bar. He jokes around and talks about his golf game, and when you tell him just to prepare whatever's good, he rummages through the fish case like Dagwood raiding the fridge for a sandwich. Out come odd end pieces that he had stashed away along with little jars of yuzu-kosho (a citron and pepper paste) and logs of pressed mullet roe.

Chef Ito can be found behind the counter at MF Sushibar in Midtown, where he helps run things while chef/owner Chris Kinjo prepares the opening of a new MF restaurant in Buckhead. Once that restaurant opens, Ito will head over there to perhaps make sushi or perhaps run the robata grill that will be a central feature.

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But now is the best time to catch his act. His food shouldn't be compared to Kinjo's because their culinary sensibilities are so different. Kinjo approaches his work like an artist, and your request for omakase (chef's choice) will result in a series of painterly compositions, each surprise lovelier and more refined than the last.

Ito — more of a craftsman — asks you lots of questions about your likes and dislikes, your hunger level, your mood. He works quickly, plying you with a couple of bites of sushi, then maybe a thin, flat, oily sliver of salmon belly enveloping a center of saline salmon roe that goes pop, pop. When you say you can't eat another bite, he has one more bite.

"Can you grab a packet of sugar?" he asks. He pours the granulated Domino sugar over a fat chunk of avocado, then squeezes a lemon wedge over the top. As soon as you've had your lightbulb moment of yum, he tells you about learning it from a guy in South America.

Chef Ito comports himself very much like a sushi chef in a small neighborhood restaurant in Japan; the experience is more about the rapport than the food itself.

I like this. In fact, I crave this.

In Japan it isn't just the sushi chefs who work to make a rapport across the counter but also those who grill chicken, fry tempura and prepare refined dishes in kappo restaurants. It is a matter of getting to know the customer, sourcing whatever foods are freshest and most seasonal, and then matching the two.

This is not simply a social convention but also a way for you — the face-stuffer — to better chart the twin helix of hunger and desire that accompanies you throughout the course of the meal. You get to discover where your appetite will take you.

Of course, you don't always have the time to eat like this, so the Japanese have developed a solution for the modern world. Kaiten-zushi bars, which are usually near public transportation hubs, send plates of fish out on a conveyor belt that passes by your stool. You simply take what appeals, and a waiter counts the number of plates to determine your bill.

As you may have read elsewhere, Atlanta has its own version at Fune in Midtown. This newish spot in a Peachtree Street high-rise tried to do the whole conveyor belt thing when it first opened but found that customers were wary of raw fish circulating the room and didn't deplete the belt often enough to make the system viable.

So now? Tented pictures of sushi round the room. You can either order from a waiter or pull a picture off the belt and wait for a sushi chef to notice and prepare it for you.

I'd suggest the latter. The sushi isn't bad and isn't too expensive, and the slightly dorky process slows you down enough to figure out where your appetite wants to go.

Would that other restaurants — sushi and otherwise — would cotton to this piecemeal approach to dining. It really is the best way to go.

• MF Sushibar, 265 Ponce de Leon Ave., 404-815-8844.

• Fune Sushi Bar, 860 Peachtree St., 404-541-9322.