In Virginia Beach, Orion’s Roof is a high-flying fish and cocktail spectacle, with a panoramic view

A review of Orion’s Roof will never begin with the food. It is the view, always the view, that will conscript your attention.

From the Roof’s penthouse aerie atop the Marriott Virginia Beach Oceanfront hotel — 183 feet and 23 stories above the water — the sprawling Cavalier Hotel across the street looks like a toy, a gingerbread house made for candy people. Diners at the east-facing windows might as well be perched on a beachside cliff. The compulsion to lose yourself in the roiling waters' abyss is surely primal.

The interior of the Japanese-inflected restaurant almost doesn’t matter, because you’re always looking elsewhere, into dizzying panoramas. But the decor would otherwise be imposing: a luxe and wood-slatted space with multiple bars, sexed-up paintings of money or peek-a-boo nudes, and a tunnel of skylight illuminating an indoor tree.

Your servers instead conduct amateur dolphin tours, directing your attention to distant fins and spouts. The spacious garden balcony is soon to become Virginia Beach’s default backdrop for dating app photos — a fizzing lychee cocktail in hand, a strip of tawny sand stretching out like a highway, an infinitude of blue.

The spectacle matters. Since it opened three months ago, Orion’s has been as close as we’ll come to a blockbuster restaurant event during the pandemic, a sky-high hall of esoteric whole-cluster wines and far-flung flavors made by a chef who headed the Bahamian outpost of famed Japanese-Peruvian restaurant Nobu.

Sushi is here, of course, though it shouldn’t be your focus. Chef Hisashi Araki’s menu puts four continents into a blender, whether on a luscious conch ceviche marinated for hours in Japanese yuzu citrus and Peruvian yellow chile, or novelties like togarashi-spiced baby corn elotes and the pork-filled Chinese bao buns made popular at New York’s Momofuku.

Even with the coronavirus emptying dining rooms throughout the region, the 240 seats at Orion’s have been precisely half-claimed for weeks or even months in advance. Hotel guests, bumbling upstairs in flip-flops, are confused or aggrieved to find their way blocked by locals who’ve booked long before them.

Want to eat dinner on a Saturday in December? Be prepared to start your meal at 5 or 9 p.m. Want to assure the pandemic-era safety of a garden balcony seat, soon to receive outdoor heaters? You’re probably coming for lunch, maybe on a Tuesday. (Pro-tip: Bird-dog a same-day cancellation online. The restaurant is diligent about confirming its reservations, and meals scheduled weeks in advance don’t always happen.)

Is all the fuss worth it? On many dishes, the answer is a resounding yes. But over three visits, inconsistency has also dogged the busy kitchen in its early months. The restaurant sometimes feels like the expensive hotel restaurant it quite literally is, and at other times it can feel like much more.

The cocktails and the view are reason all by themselves to stop by, not to mention a wine list far more adventurous than the Oceanfront usually offers. That list also grants access to high-end and interesting sakes like a honeydew-strawberry Ozeki Chobei, or a $300 liter of aged Yume Wa Masuyume that might as well be Japan’s version of Cristal, a premium drop for the ballers in the back.

The Pyrus Sling gin cocktail is a neat trick of Asian pear and red chile, while a smoked Paloma balances citrus and the lushness of egg white. A black-sugar-spiked old fashioned made with Japanese whisky is rich and balanced and boozy, as high-wire as the balcony. It is, in fact, exactly what privilege tastes like — although at $18, it is also what it costs. After more cocktails here than I’d care to admit, only the Orion’s Crush fell short, a bitter-sour “elevation” of a Virginia Beach mainstay better left alone.

Among the food, Orion’s is most successful at the menu’s margins, the street food and small-plate starters that could be cobbled together into a meal by themselves. This is true both for Araki’s homegrown Japanese kitchen specialties, and for the esoteric side projects that flex his chops at binding together disparate cuisines.

If something looks strange or unfamiliar, order it: There’s usually a reason it’s there.

In particular, the uni carbonara is a gorgeous improvisation on the humble Italian mainstay, subbing the creaminess of eggs for the delicate brine of bright-hued sea urchin flown in from Maine or Japan, and swapping Virginia pork for guanciale. The dish is a cascade of salty lusciousness, broken up by the crisp pop of pea pods.

A “vegetable bolognese” on the lunch menu is not what it seems. It is instead a deft play somewhere between Korean jja jang myun and Sichuan dan dan noodles — a spicy fermented bean sauce laden with umami-rich shiitakes, with still more savoriness added by the addition of red miso. Amid the roundness and depth of flavor, and toothsome udon noodles, the punch of chile comes on like a playful tickle in a bed full of pillows.

Miso — fermented soy — is used to great effect at Orion’s Roof, whether on beautifully deep black cod marinated for two days, or especially in a dish that often goes neglected even on the menus of dedicated Japanese restaurants. Araki’s simple miso soup, which comes singly or adorns each $11 bento lunch plate, is a playground of depth and sometimes even smoke that changes its miso and adornments daily, from silken tofu to wakame seaweed. The soup is less a palate cleanser than a complex primer for richness to come.

As for the sushi, it can be a more difficult sell. The rice, a premium Koshihikari short grain grown in California, is beautifully managed and made fresh every 4 hours. And the ultra-premium $13 cuts, whether that high-grade uni or a wagyu beef sushi, are indeed luxuries.

But at dinner, each basic nigiri costs $5, within reach of the prices at some of the more extravagant sushi restaurants in the country. The quality of the restaurant’s True World-sourced fish often doesn’t meet those expectations. For every rich scallop, there is a salmon that could be found comparably for around half the price at excellent Sushi Aka in Suffolk or Kyushu in Virginia Beach. And with such a large operation, Orion’s also doesn’t offer the fresh-menu surprises you can find at those smaller restaurants.

So do yourself a favor when it comes to raw fish: Stick to the Nikkei Peruvian-Japanese flavors Araki has made his career blending and balancing — in particular that conch ceviche, a scallop crudo, or the interplay of fat and acidity on a hamachi yellowtail jalapeno chili sushi roll, which mixes sweet onion and two kinds of fish with the brightness of yuzu soy and the crackle of chile spice.

Among the entrees, the seafood dishes are almost always the play, whether that miso cod or a lovely Chilean sea bass whose flaky subtlety is offset by a nicely acidic olive tapenade. Two plates “from the land,” an orange-accented duck and a long braised short-rib crepinette flavored with Korean dry dates, were marred by sticky-sweet glazes that turned the dishes into meaty syrup. Each was accompanied by oddly pedestrian sides, whether bland steamed broccoli or mashed taters. With their prices at nearly $30 apiece, you’d always be happier with two smaller plates.

At its rarefied price range, the hit-and-miss quality of the experience at Orion’s can be frustrating — an enjoyable carpaccio here, a disappointing poke there. But here’s a neat trick for those eager to experience the space at a lower entry fee. Though dinner at Orion’s can easily be an $80 ticket, you can also get out for $11 to $20 a person at lunch, plus whatever drinks you’d like to use to get dizzy in the heights.

Be wary of the sandwiches on that menu, which can be underfilled and made with chewy and distracting hoagie bread meant to mimic Vietnamese baguette.

Instead, look to the hearty vegetable bolognese or the lunchtime bento boxes, which each cost a mere $11. The bentos arrive with a little side salad and a simple four-piece sushi roll — not to mention that wonderful miso soup. And among them is a lovely quotation of sweet-spicy Korean bulgogi minus the grill char, mixing medallions of long-marinated hanger steak and filet mignon for ungodly tenderness.

Add one of the light Peruvian-Japanese raw-fish dishes to split between two, and your lunch will feel like an extravagance but cost relatively little. You won’t feel bad about ordering that second glass of wine from the list that says “interesting,” or splitting that carafe of premium sake. And especially during the winter, you’ll be in a much better position at lunch to take advantage of sunny views from the windows.

And yet, there is a certain magic to Orion’s Roof in the evening. Order wisely, and it’s one of those places that can remind you why you fell in love with the person sitting across from you.

As the sun dims during twilight, so do the lamps inside, keeping pace with the exterior until finally only the diners on the spacious balcony can still see the pilot lights of the slow-moving ships on the horizon. And then, still poised high above the ocean, what you’ll see in the windows is your own reflection.

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com

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If you go

The spot

Orion’s Roof and Garden, 4201 Atlantic Ave., Virginia Beach (inside Marriott hotel),

The vibe

Luxuriant, wood-grained, sprawling, Asian-inflected restaurant with multiple bars, a currently dormant sushi station, a balcony, and panoramic views of the beach and ocean.

Order this

Japanese-Peruvian fish starters, hamachi yellowtail jalapeno rolls, uni carbonara or vegetable bolognese noodle dishes, seafood entrees, miso soup, chicken curry soup, beef bulgogi bento at lunch, artisan cocktails

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily

COVID protocols: Balcony seating, masked servers, distanced tables, diligent cleaning

Food prices: Dinner entrees, $27-42; dinner noodle dishes, $17-$24; starters and street food, $6 to $21; nigiri, $5 apiece; sushi rolls, $7-$18; lunch bento boxes, $11; lunch sandwiches, $12-$18.

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Drinks: So many. Cocktails, $10-$18; extensive wines by the glass, $10-$26; minimal draft beer list, $7-$8; bottled and canned beer from $6 (Miller Lite) to $8 (craft beers). Tea and french-press coffee also available.

Kid-friendly? At lunch, they’ll be beside themselves pressing faces to windows. But dinner doesn’t feel like an occasion for tots.

Vegan/veg/gluten: The celiac will have to be wary of soy sauce, but otherwise the menu is much more rice than wheat. Pescatarians are in heaven, but vegetarians will find themselves limited: a fun Osaka-style pancake here, an asparagus veggie sushi roll there, or a vegetable lo mein or “bolognese” noodle dish there.

Disabled-access? Yes, but note that the parking lot can be steep

Reservations? Almost exclusively, on opentable.com. Flexibility or weeks of planning are likely required.

Parking: Self-serve parking garage onsite, with an hour’s parking validation at the restaurant. (Note that most meals take longer than an hour, so expect to pay $2 for the second hour.) Otherwise, metered street parking is near.

Contact: 757-937-4200, orionsroofvb.com