Listen to the women behind the counter at this Midtown East Japanese café as they relay your order to one another and you will hear immediately how the shop got its unusual name. “Umeboshi Omusubi, Hai!” they call, clipping and squeezing all but the first vowel of the second word right out, making it sound exactly the way it looks on the awning outside: “Oms/b“. The restaurant’s eponymous specialty, better known in this country by its other interchangeable name, onigiri, is a classic Japanese dish: the filled rice ball. And while onigiri are not difficult to find in New York City, they are often treated as the ugly stepsister and sold as snacks, pushed into the background in favor of sexier dishes like sushi or comfort food like donburi. Not at Oms/b–here the menu lists no fewer than 45 different varieties of rice balls, ranging from a simple, nori-wrapped omusubi with sprinkled sesame seeds and seaweed ($1.25) to a pimped-out Italian-Japanese risotto spring roll ($2.80) that is unexpectedly creamy and decadent. Oms/b’s very finely tuned focus on one primary dish has paid huge dividends in the quality of its food, resulting in a menu that is not only inexpensive, but consistently very good.

Of the four dozen varieties of onigiri on the menu, we have found a few we enjoy more than others. In particular, the salmon (pictured rear on left, $1.75), which every time we have ordered it is nearly bursting with fish, and the playfully postmodern gobo salad omusubi (pictured front on left, $2.00), which combines two traditional Japanese dishes (kinpira gobo and onigiri) in one unusual yellow soy wrapper. The contrasting textures of the crunchy burdock root alongside the sticky rice work beautifully here. Also excellent are the lobster salad, at $2.50, possibly the cheapest lobster in the city, the hearty circular eel rice ball (pictured on Flickr, $2.50), and the miso tuna ($2.80), a very savory combination of smoky marinated tuna, nozawana pickles, and black sesame that possesses a surprisingly complex and sultry flavor profile.

We have been less impressed with the simple bonito flake omusubi (pictured above, middle, $1.50), an onigiri variety that we have enjoyed elsewhere, but that here tastes dissapointingly like a Slim Jim hand roll. Moreover, given the large volume of business Oms/b does during the lunch rush, it regularly has pre-prepared onigiri in its deli cases. This is a fine solution for nearly all of the omusubi, with the clear exception of anything made with crispy fried ingredients–we have sampled a few wilted shrimp and spied a few pieces of very soggy-looking chicken waiting behind glass during the restaurant’s peak hours. Fortunately, Oms/b prepares all of its omusubi to order, if so requested. During lunch, such a special request might triple or quadruple the wait time, but for anything that contains deep fried ingredients, the tradeoff is well worth it. While you wait, there’s a secret house specialty waiting to be nibbled upon, and one that is easily among the best dishes at Oms/b: the calamari salad ($2.50). We are completely smitten with its palate-tickling brinksmanship; the fiery glazed squid pieces and crunchy seaweed teeter on the verge of spicy heat and vegetal coolness, back and forth, all in one bite. Best of all, the dish isn’t a palate killer, so by the time the staff announce your “Oms/b” are ready, you’ll still be able to taste every bite.

Oms/b, 156 East 45th Street (near Third Avenue), 212-922-9788.