Trendy, popular new sushi destination provides delicious education in Japanese cuisine and lesson in urban redevelopment.

Twenty years ago, folks who fixed up derelict houses in then-shabby neighborhoods like Midtown were referred to as "urban pioneers," and gays are often on that forefront.

Midtown is hardly decrepit any more. Now we're seeing a different kind of redevelopment: "infill" construction, like the new apartment complexes along Ponce de Leon Avenue at Midtown's southern edge.

These developments reflect, with varying degrees of success, the planning approach called New Urbanism, which is about reclaiming all the places we live by making them walkable and transit-oriented, and giving them a healthy mix of uses.

Contributing nicely in those ways, with its location on the street level of one of the new Ponce de Leon apartment houses just four blocks from MARTA, is MF Sushibar. Call it a "New Urban Pioneer."

Too bad the complex it's in is plastered - or more accurately, stapled - over with bogus "historical" detailing that has neither internal consistency nor any real history. It's embarrassingly bad design, made worse by the development's enormity.

But the restaurant itself could not be more handsome. It looks to the future, not the past. It has a modern Eurasian swank, all curves and pale wood-tones and artful lighting.

It's cool, airy and sophisticated - just like the sushi-loving hipsters who are already thronging the place each evening to nibble the chef's superb morsels. Reservations are a good idea at dinner; lunch is less crowded.

The chef is known as Magic Fingers, providing the "MF" in the restaurant's name. With his dizzying handwork, spiky hair, sharp grin and laugh as mad as a loon's, he makes the sushi bar itself the most entertaining seat in the house.

The menu, which is printed on beautiful hand-crafted paper is virtually all sushi, with just a few additional starters. One of those, the ginger salad - of mixed lettuces, cucumber slices, shredded carrot and a mild, pureed ginger dressing - adds the green element Westerners (like me) are in the habit of thinking necessary to a successful supper.

I don't pretend to know enough about sushi to say that this is the best in town. But I'm planning to return here often to get an education.

So far, the most exotic thing I've tried was natto maki, a roll of fermented soybeans with a sticky texture and a one-note, musky flavor I could learn to like.

The sushi dishes come arranged with exquisite care on traditional Japanese earthenware platters. All the seafood examples I tried were pristinely fresh.

Unagi sashimi, a smoked eel, was wonderful: warm and creamy, with a sweet brown sauce sparingly applied and a sprinkle of sesame seeds.

Spider roll, of fried soft shell crab, lettuce, carrot and avocado had a terrific textural mix of crunchy and soft with lots of flavor.

The special California roll, of crabmeat, cucumber and avocado dotted with black sesame seeds, was simpler but equally lovely.

An "Osaka style" special toro oshi sushi was, at $14.50, considerably more expensive than most items on the menu. But it was a generous serving - eight pieces - and stunningly good, made with "broken" bluefin fatty tuna - like a tartare - topped with slivered scallion and masago, tiny orange fish roe. Grab this one, if it's offered when you go.

There's a decent list of wines and sakes, and the list itself, like the menu, is a work of art. Even the bottled water here makes a design statement. It's Voss, from Norway, and arrives in an elegant, tall cylindrical bottle poured into an equally dramatic cone of a glass.

The adjacent storefronts to MF Sushibar have yet to be leased, and it's hard to picture them as thriving retail establishments. But then again, who would have imagined such a cosmopolitan restaurant in this location - or that it would be an instant success.