At Ame, owners Hiro Sone and Lisa Doumani say their personal cuisine blends local ingredients with the flavors of southern France and northern Italy and Sone's Japanese sensibilities, resulting in meals that give fusion cooking a good name. Other ingredients are beautifully handled, too, but the seafood astonishes. The sashimi bar offers a daily crudo and such refined dishes as tempura tuna poke, house-smoked trout adorned with quail eggs and trout roe, tuna tartare with foie gras and avocado, and kampachi sashimi with sea urchin sauce. Appetizers might include sautéed baby abalone on grilled asparagus with a yuzu butter sauce and chawan mushi (savory custard) with lobster. Main courses feature broiled cod with shrimp dumplings, and seared scallops with lobster tail in a parsley nage. These exquisite combinations of costly ingredients are priced accordingly, but unlike at many other high-ticket S.F. restaurants, here you feel like you get what you pay for.