Mike Andrzejewski at Seabar City, Buffalo, N.Y.,checks out his counterman’s work.

In Buffalo, N.Y., fish is usually battered and deep-fried before it’s considered edible. So you could say that even for a veteran chef, Mike Andrzejewski’s fixation on serving creative sushi in Buffalo is not exactly the easiest path to guaranteed success.

But what can you tell a guy who remained in the business despite a grievous motorcycle accident that cost him most of his left leg? He stands all day long, like most restaurant workers, and even a high-tech-looking shiny prosthesis can’t banish the aches. He might be the only one-legged Polish-American sushi chef around, but the Guinness Book of World Records has not been calling.

So let’s say you’re a sushi chef in a meat and potatoes town. What do you do?

Mike’s answer is: You give people what they want. You give them beef sushi.

The showering of caraway seeds seemed excessive, but I quickly grew to enjoy the crunch and toasty flavor.

That’s one of the only-in-Buffalo dishes on the menu of Seabar: the Beef on Weck roll ($12). It replaces raw fish with a core of lightly cooked beef filet, and wraps the whole deal with some thin beef carpaccio. Served with horseradish cream and caraway seeds, the beef-and-rice packets reminded me of the way a friend got me to eat sushi tuna in the first place - by lauding its beefy characteristics.

Andrzejewski started making it a few restaurants ago, and featured it at Seabar, in Williamsville (5235 Main St., 716-204-5283) before it arrived on the menu at his new place at 475 Ellicott St. in Buffalo (716-332-2928).

With all the other sushi experiments on Seabar’s menu, the beef might have to wait, though.

With sushi tacos, you land a pair of crispy corn taco shells stuffed with dressed cubes of raw tuna and salmon, avocado and salsa, with a chile vinaigrette. A pair of these costs $7.

No, it’s not the way traditional sushi is served - and some people think that’s a good thing.

The tacos meld seasoned fish with crunchy corn and a dollop of guacamole - sort of ceviche on the halfshell.

There’s more after the jump, including a slideshow of images from our meals at Seabar to date.

Sorry, the slideshow embedding has gone haywire. Click here to see the pictures of Andrzejewski’s artful sushi creations.

Seabar City is not a penny-pinching meal, despite steals like the sushi tacos. But there’s a raft of lunch specials going for $12 to $14. The space, in a Rocco Termini building down the street from the Washington Market, has a shiny new feel to it, and seems to be drawing steadily from the businesses and medical campus not far away.

From bottom: tuna, albacore, octopus, salmon, and hamachi, another kind of tuna.

You can ask for five nigiri pieces that are part of the $14 lunch combo. The sesame noodles and miso soup that round out the deal were good enough to stand on their own.

Sushi places are opening with some frequency in the Buffalo area, so Seabar is going to face plenty of challenges in keeping the customers coming. Perhaps it will help that Andrzejewski can’t really leverage centuries of Japanese culture, like many of the traditional sushi places, even if they’re run by Koreans.

He can get an artificial leg to make up for the mishap, but there’s no way he can pass for Japanese. If you’re a Buffalo chef in the sushi trade, maybe that’s a blessing.

Filed under: Buffalo, Restaurants