Dead center in the slow season, heat beating down unless it's rain, there's an oasis of cool on Collins Avenue amid the nearly endless road construction. It's Asian adventure in dining, Nobu Miami Beach, wrapping up its first year in the majestically renovated Shore Club Hotel.

It was just a matter of time before Nobu Matsuhisa, perhaps the nation's most significant Japanese chef, put down a beachhead here. He has 13 restaurants in all, with the flagship in Los Angeles and outposts in Aspen, New York, London, Malibu and Las Vegas. Nobu Miami is an unqualified hit, and not only because it can pack the house on a July Tuesday. When you package it with Bond St., a kind of junior (and much less expensive) version of Nobu in the Townhouse Hotel next door, you've got more ammunition in anointing Miami as America's most up-and-coming restaurant town.

In the Shore Club, Nobu chose well. His food brims with style, and so does the setting, from the sleek lobby to the sweeping garden to the bright and colorful space that is Nobu. It's bustling in there but not noisy, and the crowd is late: An 8 p.m. dinner was nearly private at the start, but not a table was empty at 10.

Matsuhisa's travels in South America inform the menu, but it is nominally Japanese, and as such, has endless choices in myriad categories. There are skewers, tempura, soups, ''special dishes,'' ''special cold dishes,'' sashimi, sushi and sushi rolls and ''main dishes.'' One piece of advice: The latter are the most expensive and not significantly larger than the mid-priced ``special dishes.''

Everything is served in the center, family style, so you get to try quite a few dishes. It's entertaining to make one's way through the menu, but if you lack that kind of patience, surrender yourself to the server, who will bring an $80-, $100- or $120-per-person Omakase, or Chef's Choice. That chef is not Nobu -- he visits about every six weeks, nosing around the kitchen and especially the gleaming sushi bar, from which emerges some of the freshest raw fish you'll ever taste.

That's evident in one of the ''special cold dishes,'' yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño ($16). This is six succulent pieces of sweet fish, lightly marinated with soy and yuzu, a Japanese citrus. It's served with a thatch of fresh cilantro and a tiny slice of jalapeño atop each piece; you're advised to get each flavor in each bite, and it's sage -- spicy and sweet and sharp all at once. Great stuff.

Sashimi salad ($18) is not technically sashimi, it's tuna tataki, a piece of tuna slightly seared and cut into eight thin pieces. It's arrayed on a large plate of mesclun with a fantastic ''Matsuhisa dressing'' -- chopped onion, black pepper, ginger, mirin, grapeseed oil and sesame seed oil. On top is a tuft of shredded daikon, which cleanses the palate.

One way to sample a lot of sushi is with the Sushi Dinner ($28, including miso soup and rice). Servers advise against this, trying to steer people to the more ambitious rolls and nigiri, but it's a good choice for the conservative palate (if there is such a thing in a sushi eater). The content depends on the night, but you might get six or seven pieces of nigiri -- tuna, salmon, shrimp, freshwater eel, mackerel -- and a six-piece roll, such as spicy tuna. It's excellent basic sushi, if a bit expensive.

Kids will enjoy beef kushiyaki ($7), a pair of simple skewers with teriyaki sauce, unremarkable but solid.

Your server will recommend Nobu's top signature dish, black cod with miso ($16), and it's outstanding. Alaskan black cod is marinated three days in sweet miso paste [white miso, sugar and mirin (cooking sake)]. The marinade permeates the mild-flavored, sort of oily fish with a buttery sweetness that's truly unique. The cod is cooked under a broiler, which yields a blackened top, an attractive touch.

Go from mild to wild with rock shrimp tempura ($16). These are popcorn shrimp, dusted with a light tempura batter and fried. They're tossed with an egg-based aioli with garlic chile paste, mixed with yuzu citrus juice, then placed atop mesclun greens tossed with a dressing of yuzu, grapeseed oil and black pepper. Most of Nobu's food is rather simple; this is not. But garlic and citrus and hot chile and oil work in perfect concert. One of the best dishes here, and it's a comparatively generous one for the price.

A main dish of diver scallops ($26) benefits from a delicious wasabi pepper sauce that also can come with salmon, shrimp, beef or chicken. It's butter, soy, sake, black pepper, garlic and wasabi (they use the paste, not the fresh, for extra spicing). The butter background is unmistakable, and it makes a solid foundation for all those spicy and sharp ingredients. Five to six scallops, sautéed with asparagus and shiitakes, soak it up well.

Another nifty sauté is mushroom toban yaki ($16). This arrives in a sizzling skillet, five to eight kinds of mushrooms (enoki, shiitakes, wood ear, button, chanterelle, morel) quick-sautéed on the grill with yuzu, soy, sake and clarified butter. They're cooked to nearly done and then quick-steamed at the end.

Dessert brings more show-off stuff, including a bento box ($13) with Valrhona chocolate souffle cake and shiso syrup, white chocolate sauce and green tea ice cream. Hard to take after so many courses, so we chose a trio of petite crme brlées ($12), served in a tiny tray. They were alternately infused with calpico, a Japanese sweet fermented milk; lemongrass and ginger. Delicious and light; the portion is almost laughable, a rarity here, but if you want just a taste, do it. Nice touch: The pair of chopsticks with this dish are made of white chocolate.