Ramen Gaijin is staying in Sebastopol. The popular Sebastopol ramen shop was eyeing a move to a space in Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square, but owners Matthew Williams and Moishe Hahn-Schuman secured a favorable lease with building owner Stephen Singer and now have ambitious plans in the works.

The other big news is that, as of Dec. 10, beer, sake and wine will flow again after a four-month dry spell. After moving into Forcetta-Bastoni earlier this year, Williams and Hahn-Schuman applied to transfer the faltering restaurant’s liquor license to their business, but the process was mired in red tape and the state blocked liquor sales until outstanding issues were resolved. Forcetta-Bastoni has since closed, and Ramen Gaijin is the sole occupant of the downtown Sebastopol space. Beer, wine and sake will be available at the bar and lounge, but not ramen. No spirits for now.

Meanwhile, the ramen restaurant will close for as long as a month over the holidays for remodeling aimed at streamlining the kitchen, retooling the bar and taking care of building-maintenance issues.

Once the renovations are complete, the bar will offer an izakaya menu, Japanese-style bar snacks like yakitori and small plate dishes made to go with drinks. There are also plans to hire a beverage director who will create an ambitious cocktail program (think Japanese whiskey-based cocktails and more sake).

Longer term, Williams says he and Hahn-Schuman are looking to bring in a sushi chef to open a 10-seat omakase-style sushi bar at the counter space in the middle of the restaurant. They also have plans to make their excellent noodles available for wholesale.

In the meantime, toast Ramen Gaijin’s commitment to stay with a beer and bowl of shoyu ramen. 6948 Sebastopol Ave., Sebastopol. 707.827.3609.

It’s hard to imagine a place atmospherically further from the sea than the parking lot of the new Santa Rosa Seafood Raw Bar and Grill.

And yet there it is, off a busy central avenue, across the street from a tire shop. The restaurant, unimpressive on the outside yet surprisingly chic and cozy on the inside, is a daughter business of the nearby Santa Rosa Seafood store, a local institution of sorts that specializes in fresh, locally sourced fish and seafood, and ships across the country.

The location, perfect for picking up fish for dinner but less appealing for a night out, has one clear advantage, though: the sign promising a restaurant “Coming Soon” was highly visible long before opening. It worked. Since opening in September, the restaurant has been buzzing, despite having “zero online presence,” as the waiter proudly noted. Indeed, the restaurant’s website still urges visitors, “Please stay tuned for our grand opening!” Santa Rosa Seafood relies on its food alone.

The kitchen fulfills the promise successfully, if not seamlessly. The ambition is visibly there, as the menu is long, varied and elaborate, listing such classics as fish and chips and fried calamari, along with raw offerings, hearty entrées and cocktails. Daily lunch and dinner specials are available too. From the specials menu, the Tokyo shrimp ($7), battered jumbos served on wakame salad and fiery red “volcano” sauce, was a classy and fun appetizer. The shrimp was delicious, if not very Japanese, and the crunchy wakame was so good that we immediately ordered more.

We shouldn’t have. The ahi tuna poke ($14) came with that very same salad. This was the appetizer that stole the show, transporting us away from a cold winter day among mid-city concrete to a sunny beach hut far away. The simple, clean-tasting cubes of tuna were very fresh and came accompanied with wakame, white rice and two dipping sauces: the “volcano” sauce and a black sesame soy sauce. This was a combination I could have nibbled on forever, playing with proportions of rice, tuna and sauces.

After such a glamorous opening, we were excited about the entrées. The calamari steak ($16) sounded intriguing but turned out to be a flat patty of wan flavor, battered in egg and resting on rice, zucchini and fingerling potatoes.

The grilled swordfish ($20), with black bean purée and mango salsa, was better. The swordfish was juicy and properly flaky, and the mango kick complemented it nicely, but the purée threatened to overwhelm the flavor of the fish.

It’s clear that the kitchen staff is precise and knowledgeable. Every individual ingredient we tried, from a simple potato to the heavenly tuna, was prepared and cut exactly right. When it comes to execution, however, it isn’t always smooth sailing. Santa Rosa deserves a destination seafood place. Give Santa Rosa Seafood Raw Bar and Grill a couple of months to focus and narrow the menu down to absolute winners, and it could become that place.