Pro Fusion

I'm not at all trendy—I generally pick up on trends five to fifteen years after they emerge—but last night I went to Philadelphia's newest, hottest restaurant. It's only been open a week, and a journalist friend invited me to an familiarization dinner for the media. She said it was "a fab freebie, one of the last shreds of glamour clinging to the carcass of journalism." Let's see now, the solace of friendship, food, drink, joyful experiences that cost no money, all things I love immoderately—OK. I went.

I've written about food, but usually not in the food-writer way. I don't call things sinful or decadent—I don't think things that taste good are sinful or indicative of societal decay—and I don't say things have a "hint of saffron," tracing subtle tastes relentlessly to their hideouts like bloodhounds running down an escaped convict. Mostly I don't because I can't. Inability shapes much of what I do, to tell you the truth.

But I also am more interested in a restaurant's general approach. The thing about trendiness that I don't like is that it chokes out a certain natural profusion in the culinary environment. One restaurant does something new, and then everyone is doing that. The eclecticism of "fusion"—I mean, everyone's fusing stuff, all over the landscape. I just checked the menu of the fanciest French restaurant in this area, one where people wait long periods before they're vouchsafed an opportunity to finally spend their money there. One of the entrees was vaguely Caribbean, another vaguely Asian. All of it was utterly familiar. They're somehow making freshness itself unfresh. And there's something bloodless about it, too. I often tell people that I'd rather have a seriously good, honest expression of an unfancy food, an outstanding hamburger, say, than one more chicken breast with a ginger-mango-blackberry reduction on a bed of polenta. And years ago I dubbed the latter "Yuppie Chow." (Cute but that's my term so hands off.)

So anyway, you can't create perpetual freshness by continually throwing fruit and berries in the fry pan and what? Why are you shouting? The food? God almighty, the food was incredible. Some fusions aren't worth the bother, but when you combine Peruvian and Cantonese cuisine, the fabric of space-time is ripped open and this incredible profusion of dizzying dishes comes pouring out into our own universe. Imaginative, subtle juxtapositions of flavors. Friendly, no-attitude staff. A little too noisy but pobody's nerfect. Go there! Go go go! I mean, I don't like vain, empty trends. But I do like good food and this was.