Atlanta’s Starfish Restaurant sits around the corner from popular Buckhead watering hole Holeman & Finch Public House on busy Peachtree Road.

Skip the valet service and park in the deck behind the restaurant for free. The welcoming Asian décor in Starfish is punctuated by a playful assortment of napkin rings adorning the tables and the slender sushi bar overlooks the chefs at work.

The staff greets and seats patrons quickly, although it easily took twenty minutes for our pre dinner cocktails to arrive. Our rolls began hitting the table before our martinis and edamame, but the zingy ginger dipping sauce that accompanied the steamed soybeans made the wait seem a bit shorter.

Classic handmade sushi rolls like Spicy Tuna and Salmon Rolls were good, but largely forgettable. Whereas the more complex rolls, like the Orange Crush Roll and the Tempura Calamari left us searching for an excuse to order additional rolls.

The Starfish “Original Rolls” play on a theme of movie titles like the X Men Roll and the 40 Year Old Virgin Roll. We steered clear of the Original Rolls since they seemed pretty pricy, but then wondered if we might have missed out on the most interesting part of the relatively plain menu.

The service on a Saturday night was friendly, but terribly slow, with the tables remaining mostly full throughout the evening. My advice would be to give Starfish a try during the week, at lunch, or when you are not crunched for time. Be daring with your menu choices and go for the most unique sounding menu items if you want a meal worth remembering.

Starfish is a fun restaurant in a busy hub of Buckhead, but they have a few critical areas for improvement. They will need to upgrade the service by adding more staff and menu creativity, but keep an eye on their pricing if they are going to survive this heavily saturated area of Atlanta where first impressions are everything.

The restaurant will turn four years old in spring of 2010, which is surely an accomplishment in Atlanta.