Despite the great beauty and enormous bounty of their land, Americans have always suffered from a basic sense of inadequacy. They have neither the magnificent cathedrals, the great musical history nor the incomparably superb wines of Europe; they lack the five thousand year sense of culture and history of China and Japan; and, worst of all, even though they may have given the world corn, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, they have never evolved a world-class cuisine of their own.

If Americans suffer from feelings of inadequacy, they hide them well with their perpetual sense of optimism, the feeling that tomorrow will always be better. It may be precisely this optimism that has led to the birth of what American chefs from New York to California are referring to as "fusion cuisine", literally a fusion of cultural, ethnic and culinary styles that are either native to or eventually immigrated to America. As if they have all attended the same seminar and memorized the key words of the lectures given, American chefs can all tell you that fusion cuisine describes a style in which chefs, no matter from where they come, draw heavily on the culinary traditions of their cultural and ethnic roots as well as on the abundance of high quality meat, poultry, fish, fruits and vegetables that are available in America.

Translated into the dining rooms of some of America's best restaurants what this means is cross-cultural inventions such as New Orleans steamed crabs served with an Far Eastern version of pesto sauce that includes basil and red curry paste; roasted air-dried Virginia wild duck served with a ginger-cherry sauce and a mixture of wild and basmati rice; Massachusetts clams in a Mediterranean potato-olive oil stock that are served with Chinese sausage and watercress; and New York sirloin steaks marinated with Indonesian spices; and terrines of chicken livers and tofu.

What it also means is that American chefs have a bubbling, sometimes even raging enthusiasm to experiment with new ingredients. Depending partly on their own cultural and ethnic backgrounds, sometimes applying Asian, Caribbean, Mediterranean or sometimes even familiar Western methods into what they are convinced is a uniquely American culinary style.

Why They Feel The Need

Contrary to popular belief, America, which is a land of plenty, has never lacked in culinary greatness. The lobsters and oysters of New England; the corn dishes of the Indians who were the original native Americans; the spicy stews of the people known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch"; the Cajun and Creole styles of New Orleans, the soft-shelled crab dishes of Maryland; the salmon of the Pacific North West; the cured hams of Virginia and Kentucky; and the fruit-pies that could be found in every home and every restaurant throughout the land, were often magnificent. The problem was, however, that as Americans perceived them, each of these regional sub-cuisines were composed primarily of simple, country-style dishes that lacked the sophistication of the best French, Italian or Chinese dishes.

Even the massive numbers of European immigrants began to pour into the east coast cities of the United States in the 18th century did little for the collective American culinary ego. The Italians, Irish, Greeks, Germans and Scandinavians all brought their own cooking styles with them but in their homes and in the many restaurants they opened, they also featured foods that were simple and country-style. These immigrants introduced Americans to the ingredients of Europe, but haute cuisine seemed destined to bypass the North American continent. To add insult to injury and to further arouse their sense of culinary inadequacy, nearly all of the most prestigious restaurants from New York to California featured French cuisine.

What may have triggered anew the American hope for a unique cuisine was the change that took place starting in the 1970s, when large numbers of immigrants began arriving from across the Pacific. Especially in California, where the chefs may be the most restless in the world, the cooking methods, ingredients and flavors of the far east became an almost immediate rage. By the '80s coinciding with the birth of the yuppie phenomenon, a considerable number of chefs in Los Angeles and San Francisco and even a few in New York had started to create such unpalatable pseudo-oriental dishes as walrus sushi in raspberry and maple syrup sauce and venison carpaccio that was served virtually swimming in a marinade of soy sauce, coriander and hot chili peppers.

Fortunately, even the most jaded of restaurant goers quickly lost their taste for the outrageous, and a handful of chefs, some of whose families had been in America for many years and others who were first generation Asian-Americans, began to develop the style that came to be known variously as "Pacific Rim" or "Pacific New Wave", in which far more reasonable and logical combinations were made both of cooking methods and ingredients of both continents. By whatever name one choose to call it, by the late eighties "East-West fusion" had become a fact of life and a great deal of the food served in the best contemporary American restaurants had a definite Asian flavor to it. The dining public had become more sophisticated and more willing to try new flavors and combinations of flavors and there was hardly a young chef in the entire country who did not use soy sauce, ginger or lemon grass at least occasionally. Shitake mushrooms, basmati rice and sashimi style tuna became commonplace, and stir frying became almost as popular in America as grilling. France and Italy still provided much of the basic vocabulary for the foods Americans ate, but the accents were increasingly on China, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, India and above all, Thailand.

As much as Americans may be famed for their optimism, they are equally renowned for their constant need for change, movement and variety, and after less than a decade of being ultimately "in", East-West Fusion is beginning to wane. In its place what is beginning to appear as the newest form of fusion cuisine is now being referred to as "Med-Rim" or, if one prefers "Mediterranean- American fusion". Of a sudden, America has discovered the charms of the Mediterranean. Todd English of "Olives" in Charlestown, Massachusetts offers a dish of baked lamb with cucumber sauce and pieces of flat bread that are topped with goats' cheese and tomatoes; Andrew Nathan, chef and owner of New York City's "Frontiere" makes his own harissa to serve with merguez sausage and couscous salad; Monique Barbou, formerly of Fuller's in Seattle lists one dish of "spicy felaffel with lemon-tehnia dressing, homemade pita and dukka spice"; and Don Pintabonna of New York's Tribeca Grill" says he has "created" the halvah parfait. In fact, only a year or two after having made its debut, some, including chef Roseanne Gold (see the box below) predicted that the new craze will be so popular that it will "last until the turn of the century". In America, where fashions sometimes change as rapidly as the sun sets, that will be quite an accomplishment.

Although many are calling this latest development "Med-Rim" some are calling in "Pan-Mediterranean". Some have even chosen to draw on the Arabic language and call it "Cuisine Baladi". These terms are badly chosen and misleading, however. Unless the map makers of the world are badly informed, the rim of the Mediter- ranean actually includes parts of 12 different nations and the only culinary things they share in common is the generous use of olive oil, whole grains, beans, nuts, garlic and yoghurt. Refer- ring to the Americanized version of North African and Middle Eastern cuisine as "Cuisine Baladi" is even more confusing, for by any standards what is baladi is country-style, simple foods without any pretext or attempt at being pretentious. Dishes such as rosemary flavored lamb with a demi-glace sauce based on harissa spiced molasses, raviolis filled with dates, and grilled trout with pomegranate aioli sauce have nothing simple about them and halvah souffle have no trace whatever of the country-style about them.

Is "Fusion Cuisine" really a Cuisine

Cuisines do not just happen because one, two or one hundred chefs decide that a particular flavor or style is going to be popular. Cuisines are the result of evolution, an intermingling of forces over centuries or even millennia. A national or regional cuisine develops and changes as part of a living culture. Affected by historical forces, geography, geology, climate and technology as well as by the raw materials that are available. True cuisines are such that a scholar who understands a nation's history, geography, topography and sociology can describe that nation's cuisine by projection from this knowledge, just as a paleontologist can reconstruct the appearance of a dinosaur from a single bone.

Cuisines evolve and are not fads that less than a decade before vanishing to make room for "something new". Thus, I can only conclude that contrary to the enthusiastic opinions of many primarily young American chefs, that what is being wrongly called "fusion cuisine" is little more than a sometimes noble series of experiments in the kitchen - often original, often tasty and often inventive, but little more than experiments that will be forgotten in even less time than they took to develop.

Even the very definition of fusion cuisine stands on not too solid id ground, for fine chefs have always, consciously or otherwise, been influenced by their cultural and social backgrounds as well as their personal experiences. The Libyan born chefs who prepared the meals of the Roman gastronome Lucullus introduced couscous and harisa sauce to the homes of Rome; the Sicilian born chefs of the Medici family are said to have introduced the charm of olive oil and garlic to all of Northern Italy; and the cook who traveled with Marco Polo to the Far East and later became the chef to Pope Pious II, brought the secret of making sorbet to Europe. Even in more modern times, intelligent French chefs have always acknowledged their debt to Italian cuisine and the greatest Italian chefs freely admit that without the influence of North Africa their cooking would be a mere shadow of itself. Perhaps the silliest claim of those most deeply involved with fusion cuisine is that they and they alone are active in seeking out the freshest and best quality raw materials and preparing them in ways that will best highlight their natural flavors is exclusive to them. Frankly, I am somewhat surprised that some of the great chefs of France, Italy, China and Thailand have not seen this insult as reason enough to challenge some of these young chefs to a duel. Another reason to doubt that fusion cuisine is a genuine cuisine is in its very need for originality, each individual chef looking for his or her own individual expressions of just what "fusion" is about.

The simple fact is that the catch phrase of fusion cuisine has taken hold only in places that have not developed their own great cuisine. The term is as commonly heard today in Australia, New Zealand and Canada as it is in the United States. It is now catching on in Israel and I will not be surprised in a few years to hear that it has become the latest buzz-word in Greenland. I do doubt, however, that French, Italian, Chinese or Thai chefs will ever take fusion cuisine seriously. After all, they have already developed their great cuisines.

On The Plus Side

Even though the best dishes that have evolved during the "experiment" of fusion cuisine lack greatness, they can be delightful and worth sampling. My suggestion, however, is to sample them before they move aside to make room for whatever America's newest culinary passion will be. Following is a list of some of the very best restaurants in which to sample such fare:

Imperial Dynasty: 2 China Alley, Hanford, California. One of the very first to intelligently combine Franco-Chinese ingredients and cooking methods, Richard Wing prepares such dishes as escar- rgots stuffed with ginger, coriander, chives, sesame oil and cashew nuts; and lamb fillets in a sauce perigourdine made with Chinese mushrooms instead of truffles.

The Mansion on Turtle Creek, 2821 Turtle Creek Boulevard, Dallas, Texas. By drawing on Thai, Mediterranean and southwestern American styles, Dean Fearing has evolved such dishes as lobster paella soup with aioli croutons; shrimp smoked with hot peppers served with tamales; and grilled swordfish served with three different sauces accompanied by a fried noodle salad.

Talesai, 9043 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, California. Pacific Rim at its best, chef Prakas Yenbamroong offers such dishes as grilled salmon fillet with a slightly sweet garlic and white pepper sauce; shrimp and veal wrapped in rice paper; and dried shrimp, shallots, ginger and chili peppers served on raddichio.

Chinois on Main, 2709 Main Street, Santa Monica, California. This is Wolfgang Puck's famous restaurant where French and Chinese come together with American here in dishes such as warm curried oysters with cucumber sauce and salmon caviar; goose liver with marinated pineapple and ginger-cinnamon sauce; and lamb that has been sea- soned with coriander and served with grilled onion rings and radicchio leaves.

Olives: 10 City Square, Charleston (Boston), Massachusetts. Todd English combines a style that has been described as "one part rustic Italian, one part Mediterranean, one part American and one distinct part Todd English". Among his specialties are pizza topped with figs and proscuitto, fish cakes with lobster sauce,and a pudding made of parmesan cheese that is served with a sauce based on sweet peas

Keren: Rehov Eilat, 12. Tel Aviv. Drawing in equal parts on the cuisines of France, North Africa and the Mediterranean basin, chef Chaim Cohen has developed a comfortable and often enchanting style of his own. Among his best known specialties are such dishes as squid salad, mushroom cappuccino, calf's brain in caper sauce, and foie gras with vanilla sauce served with smoked wild rice.

To find a handful of "fusion" dishes from the above restaurants, click here.

© Daniel Rogov