ROME -- THE restaurant's name is written on glass doors in red brush strokes that evoke Japanese characters. When chefs plunge their hands into water tanks to grab dinner for fashionable people around the bar, you almost expect something live to wriggle on the cutting board.

But this is Rome, so the fare is not colorful fish, but that blandest and baldest of white cheeses, that most simple and soggy Italian staple: the mozzarella ball.

Òbikà is Rome's, and probably history's, first mozzarella bar. Since it opened about five months ago, at Via dei Prefetti 26a, near the Pantheon, it has been doing a brisk business.

"People are tired of pasta and pizza," said Andrea Corsetti, one of the owners. "Mozzarella has always been considered a poor food. But we said it should be valued. It represents Italy."

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