No matter how callous and unfeeling we restaurant critics may appear, none of us, as far as I know, has actually hoped for a restaurant to burn down. I may have to reconsider that, though, in light of how much good it seems to have done a sushi bar called Uogashi.

When Uogashi’s owners in Japan — a seafood distributor, according to several employees, although the management has declined to confirm it — decided the time had come to expand to the United States, they chose a location in the East Village. The space was deep, and the spare blond-wood interior featured a sushi bar along the right wall that had room for at least two dozen seats, starting near the entrance and running nearly all the way to the back of the restaurant.

The populism suggested by all those counter seats was reflected in the menu. There were nigiri platters for under $50 and an omakase for less than $100, prices you might see in a neighborhood sushi dispensary with no special pedigree. Apart from the tuna, all the seafood was imported from Japan and seemed unusually fine for the price, although the slices were often two or three sizes too large for the rice, and the individual pieces were on the bland side. My meal at the counter wasn’t quite exciting enough to lure me back for a full review, so I shuffled Uogashi off into a roundup of good values on the sushi front that I was writing.