For a place this small and casual, it sure offers some spiffy plates
Mark Laba
Province
Dawn Dawson (left) serves spinach salad and hand-rolled cilantro-pork dumplings. Christina Doo (right) holds black-eyed Shanghai and sweet-Thai chicken bites. Photograph by : Jason Payne, The Province
You can light a fuse, change a fuse, blow a fuse, be confused, defuse a bomb or a situation, suffuse a room with light or light a room with nuclear fusion, refuse the cold fusion theory or diffuse a kitchen with the aromatic infusions of a profusion of cooking, transfusing the senses with effusive displays of drooling and chop-licking anticipation. Much like I saw Pluto do in an old Mickey Mouse cartoon when he didn’t get any birthday cake.
It is the latter that concerns me here. Not Pluto but the chop-licking action, so I set out for this place that bills itself as Asian fusion in a flash, cooking to see and taste what exactly can be done with intricate and intriguing recipes after the hourglass has been tipped and the sands of time are running out, so to speak.
I decided to use Peaches, The Law and Texas Slim as a judging panel, three disparate sets of tastebuds if there ever was one. If I could fuse these three food curmudgeons into one agreeable and perhaps even favourable opinion then this small eatery would’ve accomplished nothing short of a miracle, or at least convinced an old codger like me that there is some ray of hope in the food-fusion racket.
It’s a small joint, as sparse as a Zen monk’s mind — when he’s got the spiritual pedal to the metal and has the om going full throttle — with a few simple black tables and some stool and counter seating and three colour field panels on the wall that read serenity, tranquility and harmony, or something to that effect. I’m not sure — I was falling asleep.
We put the kitchen into overdrive with our order, determined to get as good an overview as possible as if we were human satellites. Beginning with hand-rolled three-onion cakes ($3). They looked as unassuming as a chartered accountant on holiday in Bangkok but pack a lot of punch into their flaky baked bodies with scallions, red onion and shallots.
Essentially everything got laid out at once and this is how it all played out. The curry cilantro skewers with chicken breast dressed in Madras curry ($8) is excellent, albeit the price may be a little steep for two skewers, but the ginger rice is very nice. Pork dumplings ($6) with pork, panko and veggies, the triumvirate of pan-Asian cooking, was a great success with a wonderful dumpling wrapping.
Texas Slim, a real meat-and-potatoes man, was excited by the honey-hoisin braised short-rib selection ($12), marinated and braised for as long as Fidel Castro has been in power it seems. Succulent, satisfying and a worthy finish to the business end of a high-voltage cattle prod.
The Black Eyed Shanghai sounds like an old film-noir movie, with double-dealings and nefarious undertakings in an alleyway opium den, but turned out to be delicious thick Shanghai noodles with bok choy, shiitake mushrooms and red pepper finished with a garlic-black bean sauce ($8).
The black sheep of the bunch was not a sheep, but a porker. Asian-style spaghetti and meatballs ($8) was OK, the meatballs a little off-putting initially with their pale pork complexion. But after the first bite with an echo of cilantro in these warm-hearted pig-snuffling orbs, I was won over. The spaghetti and tomato sauce especially seemed as timid as Chef Boyardee up against a Sicilian brick wall by local mafioso after not coming clean on a gambling debt.
Still I’m amazed that such a small and casual –to the point of dropping in in your bathrobe wouldn’t seem unusual — joint like this is turning out some spiffy plates that wouldn’t seem out of line at more monkey-suit establishments. It’s a quick fix, no doubt about that, so don’t get gussied up, but your stomach will leave feeling like a million bucks.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Wok-fried that’ll make you tongue-tied.
RATINGS: Food: B+ Service: A- Atmosphere: B+
Review
Fuse Pan Asian Express
Where: 1078 Mainland St. (entrance around the corner on Helmcken), Vancouver
Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-687-3873
Drinks: Soft drinks and Asian sodas.
Hours: Mon.-Fri., noon-8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., noon-6 p.m.
© The Vancouver Province 2008
