Call me harsh but I despise it when restaurants decide to go for several cuisines in a single menu. In Mauritius that seems to be the case for many restaurants. They would propose "Thai" food, followed by "Italian" food and then some "Mauritian" recipes and guess what? None of the recipes have any authentic taste. It`s neither Thai, nor Italian and sometimes not even Mauritian. The food is just some wild interpretation of those cuisines made by someone who, I am guessing, has not even had a proper taste of authentic Thai or Italian or any other foreign cuisine. And they call that fusion food. Ooh! I shiver thinking about fusion food.
Now you see, fusion food is not a bad concept in itself. I don`t know if you`ll agree with me, but we do that all the time at home. I sometimes add curry leaves to my spaghettis or soy sauce to an oriental recipe. Examples like that are varied and they depend from person to person. People have got their own interpretation of classic recipes and no one is judging them, except when they decide to make money out of it. Then, I`m the first one to be judging them harshly.
The thing is, if fusion food is really well done, it is comparable to a fantastic culinary voyage into novel and peculiar tastes and flavours. And if it is badly done, then, to put it plainly, it is crappy. And I don`t want to pay for crappy food. I don`t want anyone else for that matter to pay for crappy food and to be misled into thinking that Thai or Italian or Indian food is crappy just because they tried it at the wrong place.
