Sushi is just raw fish, right?

Wrong.

It's much more than that, as people on the West and East coasts have known for several years.

Although the Japanese dish is thousands of years old, it has only recently begun to catch on in East Lansing.

SanSu, 4750 S. Hagadorn Road, opened in early February. It's one of several new restaurants increasing sushi awareness around East Lansing.

"It's not pure raw fish," said SanSu assistant manager Soo Ahn, a 1999 MSU graduate. "Sushi is served on top of rice."

Sushi is made of cold rice seasoned with vinegar and raw fish, seafood or vegetables wrapped in seaweed.

With the recent additions of SanSu and Omi, a sushi diner that recently opened in the City Center, there now are six East Lansing restaurants serving the dish.

Ahn said the added competition could be an advantage.

"People will know more about sushi if there are more places," Ahn said. "We have a business-based clientele, and downtown will be more for students."

In downtown is Omi, 210 M.A.C. Ave. It opened April 14, and business is already booming, general manager Won Jin Choi said.

"(Sushi) started as kind of a snack food," he said. "It's not as fishy as people think it is."

The restaurant isn't only for the MSU community, he said.

"A lot of people are thinking we're just catering to young people, but I think the look is geared for everybody," he said. "There are about 30 households above us. We're hoping to attract people from Lansing. We're not trying to attract one kind of people."

Omi and SanSu aren't the only new sushi eateries near campus. The sushi bar at Korea House Restaurant, 978 Trowbridge Road, opened last summer. Cafe Mania, 547 E. Grand River Ave., also has a sushi bar; it opened in March 2002.

SanSu has a traditional look, but it's still fairly modern. Ahn said her father's restaurant has a tatami room for larger parties.

"It's a traditional Asian-style room," she said. "You have to sit down on mats."

Reservations for the room are preferred, but Ahn said guests can use it without a reservation if it's not occupied.

In addition to sushi, SanSu offers Japanese beer, wines and sake (pronounced sah-KEY). Omi expects to offer similar items in the near future. Choi said a permit has been approved, but there are outstanding legal issues preventing the sale of alcohol right now.

A recent visit to Omi found the diner to have a stylish, almost futuristic atmosphere. From the walls to the chairs, the interior is colored almost entirely in royal and sky blues, and the menus are made to fit inside CD jewel cases.

Choi, originally from Ann Arbor, called the color scheme "subtle" and said he wanted to set up shop in East Lansing because there weren't enough contemporary sushi places in the area.

The pages of Omi's menu have artistic renderings of the restaurant's furnishings, but they don't have a single picture of the food, which might be troubling for sushi 1virgins.

The restaurant is also likely to see a decline in customers in the coming weeks when students and faculty members leave town for the summer, but Choi isn't too concerned.

"That will actually give us time to go back and go through our menu again," he said. "By September, we might have a new menu based on what we think is popular."

Choi also said pictures would be considered as part of a new menu.

"It's all in the works," he said. "We don't want to rush into it."

East Lansing is a good location for sushi restaurants, Choi said.

"We were trying to find a spot anywhere in Michigan," he said. "College towns have such a good mixture of people from everywhere."