One of the happiest phenomena of Greater Boston dining in recent years has been the spread of Japanese-Korean (generally Korean-owned) sushi bar-restaurants to outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. Although these restaurants are often close copies of each other, the template is a good one, and they’re almost all of high quality. Unlike many other kinds of restaurants, they’re also improving with time, as they find knowledgeable customers, connect with food sources, and expand to afford more-skilled chefs. Here is a type of moderately priced, rather-fast restaurant food that appeals to increasing numbers of Americans as tasty, healthful, and fun.

Korean immigrants are not the first to pave their way with restaurants, nor even the first to succeed with a menu not mostly their own; one thinks of the Greek and Arab-American soda fountains and diners of the early 20th century, the Greek pizza places and Afghan-owned rotisserie-chicken stands of the late 20th century, or some of the recent moves of Indian-American entrepreneurs. But the current wave of sushi bar-restaurants rides an unusually steep curve of gathering steam. It will be natural but a little sad when the next generation of American-educated professionals sells the family sushi bar to members of some other immigrant group with a menu and a dream.

I first noticed how good these restaurants have become at JP Seafood, in my own neighborhood, and at Misono, in West Roxbury, which I initially reviewed in these pages as an interesting risk for its neighborhood, but with an overlong menu. What surprised me on a recent return to Misono was how much the sushi bar has improved. There are a few more Asian-Americans among the clientele, but mostly there are a lot of Anglos ordering special maki and big sashimi assortments.

This is also happening at Village Sushi and Grill, which opened under my radar about a year ago, and now has the customers and the capability to turn out some wonderful food. A lot of this food — such as the truly excellent fried ice cream, the special maki with spicy mayonnaise, and the generous bento-box lunches — is not authentically Japanese or Korean, but part of an emerging Korean-American restaurant culture. Some of these things will eventually become as American as Reuben sandwiches, spaghetti and meatballs, or boneless spareribs.

One of those things could be a special I had on scorpion maki ($7.95), basically a long, inside-out avocado-eel maki wrapped with thin slices of cooked shrimp and sliced into five delectable pieces. We’ve clearly come a long way from the original Japanese idea of sushi as a rice-based snack with raw fish on top. We’ve added a Western Hemisphere vegetable (avocado), a bit of rich broiled fish (eel), a visual scandal (the giant shrimp construction), and yet produced something absolutely delicious.

All the other sushi I tried at Village Sushi were excellent, from a two-piece order of ama ebi ($3.50), a tiny sweet shrimp tied onto the rice with seaweed ribbons, to a salmon-cucumber roll ($4.75), up to the real challenge for a sushi bar, the sashimi deluxe ($22.95). This has nicely sliced fingers of surf clam, octopus, red tuna, yellowtail, salmon, and a couple of white-fleshed fish, all impeccably fresh and pillowed on daikon shavings, the slices arranged with interleavings of lemon or shiso (the citrus-spicy leaf that is as excitingly different and controversial as cilantro).

A Korean fishcake appetizer ($5.95) is actually made of real pieces of whitefish fillet, correctly fried with a tangy dipping sauce. Contrarily, the vegetable koroke ($2.95) is actually a potato croquette with a few decorative peas, carrots, and scallions, saved by the same sauce. Wasabi shumai ($5.95), which sound deadly, actually have the mustard-like horseradish sauce on the side. Edamame ($3.95) are steamed fresh soybeans served in the shell. You work them out in your mouth, picking up the surface salt on the way. The typical Korean side dish of sesame-flavored spinach, ohitashi ($3.95), makes an effective appetizer here, as does a simple dish of steamed silken tofu with a soy-based sauce ($3.95).

In the Obento lunch box (my sample being the salmon-teriyaki box, $7.95), you get a thin fillet of broiled salmon with a slightly sweet homemade teriyaki sauce, but also a bowl of white miso soup, a mesclun salad (!) with the typical gingery French dressing, two pieces of potato cutlet, two pieces of shrimp tempura (perhaps a stand-in that day for the Korean fishcake), three pieces of avocado maki, and a ball of sticky short-grain rice. That’s a big lunch.

At dinner, those who aren’t into sushi might well go Korean with something like the ok dol bi bim bap ($12.95). The tuna version ($13.95) adds five slices of red tuna sashimi to the complicated rice bowl that’s topped with sesame spinach, bean sprouts, optional kimchee, mushrooms, a fried egg, and such. The key to the dish is that the stone bowl puts an extra bottom crust on the rice.

Udon ($8.95, also with tempura, spicy seafood, or in a stir-fry) is a big bowl of noodle soup, here in an excellent fish stock, with three kinds of fish sausage, some underdone broccoli (the fusion element), and toppings of shredded seaweed paper and fresh scallions to dress up the thick square noodles. Teriyaki swordfish ($13.95) is like the Korean-American analogy to fried chicken with spaghetti. The fillet is thin but good in that sweet sauce, and it becomes an American three-way platter with a cone of rice, a bank of underdone broccoli florets, and some stir-fried carrot and onion.

Village Sushi and Grill has a wine list that doesn’t really go with the food, but provides a nice Montes Chilean merlot ($5.95). More to the point is Japanese beer, including the new Yebisu stout draft ($5.95). It isn’t a stout at all, nor a draft, but it is a premium version of Sapporo’s clean-tasting lager, sort of a better-made copy of Michelob. Green tea is nice, but try the no-caffeine, whole-grain alternative of barley tea (tea is apparently no charge with food).

Desserts are the usual ginger and green-tea ice creams and a very special fried ice cream ($4.95). Fried to order, it’s really fresh and crispy, and you can have either green-tea or ginger ice cream inside.

Village Sushi is a small room, refreshed by a wall-mounted waterfall and a lengthy series of panels of characters, perhaps a whole Buddhist sutra or Gospel translation. Service is very good. Mind the no-Monday hours; even in well-served neighborhoods and towns, it’s hard to scratch an itch for udon on a Monday.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com