In a simpler time, ingredients like smoked salmon and cream cheese were as far-out as New York sushi got. Now, it seems like every new place offers some “creative” sushi with Western flavors. Momoya, which has supplanted old-school sushi haven Meriken on a popular Chelsea corner, exemplifies the trend, supplementing its arsenal of ordinary dishes with some imaginative specials. Chef Chie Shirahata worked at London’s Nobu. She doesn’t reach for those culinary heights here, opting instead for a lengthy and affordable menu dotted with surprises. Sushi-joint standbys like miso soup ($2), steamed edamame ($4), and green salad with ginger dressing ($5) vie for attention among slicker peers. Unctuous sweet-pea soup ($5) tastes of fresh pea puree and butter, in almost equal parts. A couple of whole grilled shrimp in the bright-green pool point out how little adornment the soup needs. Arugula topped with three tempura fried sardines ($8) hardly belongs in the salads section, but there it is. The oily fish, heavyish batter, and wasabi mayonnaise dressing add up to a delicious but dauntingly rich starter.

Other appetizers have a bit more subtlety, like crisp-skinned strips of eel wrapped in sheets of cucumber and set adrift in a puddle of sweet sesame-soy sauce ($8), or seared beef slices served with a heap of piquant radish sprouts ($10).Sweet miso-glazed black cod is de rigueur, especially with Nobu alumni, but this filet ($10) is the size of entrees elsewhere and marvelously buttery. Toro tartare ($9) is a waste of good tuna belly: the fish, prized for its melting texture, is minced beyond recognition and doused with horseradish cream.

Momoya offers a familiar array of cooked main courses – teriyaki chicken or salmon ($15/$16), tempura udon ($11) – as well as tiers of sushi and sashimi platters, in regular ($17.50/$19) and deluxe ($23/$27) editions. These are more than serviceable. Here, as elsewhere, the plain salmon and tuna that typically inhabit these popular platters are deliciously fresh because of high turnover, which compensates for their lack of pedigree.

But the restaurant’s pride is its wealth of a la carte sushi, which ranges from basic shrimp, fluke, avocado, on up to exotica involving mozzarella and raspberries. The latter, in sauce form, graces a high point of the menu, its special spicy tuna roll ($9), wherein fiery-seasoned chopped tuna is wrapped in rice and shrouded with cool slabs of rich yellowtail, whose surface is seared to a palate-exciting smoky burn. Raspberry sauce drizzled sparingly on top, along with toasted almond slivers, startles at first but proves to be an excellent complement to the composition. The Nakamura roll ($10) inverts the equation, wrapping yellowtail and salmon in vivid pink tuna topped with a dab of scallop mousse; the crunch of cucumber adds complexity. Both of these are delicious, well-balanced, and include a lot of top-notch fish for the price.

A salmon-mozzarella roll ($10) with basil sauce works surprisingly well, the fresh cheese adding richness but not unwanted Italianness. A couple of rolls in alternative wrappers are less impressive: nine kinds of vegetables ($7) tucked in a vegetable sheet turn out to be low in flavor, and a shrimp-crab-avocado melange ($7.50) in a spring-roll wrapper depends for its flavor on a Thai-style sweet chili sauce. Of the less exotic fare, asparagus-bonito ($5) and spicy yellowtail ($4.50) rolls stand out, both enriched with hints of creamy mayonnaise that bring out the best in their ingredients. Others stand or fall on the strength of their fish, which is generally good but not exceptional.

The dessert list treads familiar ground, with a warm chocolate cake (albeit with shisoleaf sauce: $5), a creamy green-tea millecrepes cake ($7), and creme brulee ($5), but a delicate custard flavored with white wine stands out as atypical and refreshing.

Momoya offers a well-curated list of 20 sakes, with a flight of three for $10 providing a capsule tour of three sake grades: junmai, ginjo, and daiginjo. The usual hot-and-cold dichotomy is complicated here by a couple of sakes that are served just warm, in special pots that allow the carafe to rest in a heated water bath. Whereas lesser sakes are often heated to mask their harsh edge, these are developed by the gentle warmth, and offer bigger flavor than one expects from a fine cold sake: Kamoizumi’s Shusen ($5 for a small carafe) displays under the influence of heat a terrific piney scent and full body. Among the cold ones, Izumi Judan ($8/$30) is billed as “a sake for martini lovers” and indeed has a faint whiff of juniper in its fresh, dry palate. A few cloudy unfiltered sakes, including Kamoizumi’s ginjo nigori ($11/$42) offer a mellow, yeasty-sweet alternative. An equal number of mostly New World wines includes the silky Heron Pinot Noir ($9/$36), friend to salmon everywhere, and a drily ripe Covey Run Washington Riesling ($8/$32).

Momoya’s innovations aren’t the core of its menu, but they provide enough spice to set the restaurant apart from many of its older neighborhood peers and firmly in the new school of sushi. Even as we brace for the inevitable flurry of abominable fusion sushi dishes, we can enjoy the best of these new ideas.

Momoya, 187 Seventh Ave. at 21st Street, 212-989-4466.