Fusion cooking is taking so many twists and turns that one day there’s just going to be one big cuisine–a true global village of fine dining.
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Nevertheless, imaginative chefs keep coming up with intriguing new ethnic and regional combinations to grace the palate, as two recent openings illustrate. In the elegant new Wyndham Chicago hotel in Streeterville, John Coletta marries northern California with Tuscany at Caliterra. A few blocks away, in River North, Michael Tsonton uses classic Spanish cooking as a base for his New American flourishes at Brio. The results in both cases are tasty and smart–carrying us several steps closer to that United Nations of cookery.
A winning starter was the shrimp “cigar,” the shellfish rolled up in a thin, phyllolike pastry, lightly fried, then mated with mustard fruits and a light slaw of spring veggies ($8). The plate was decorated with Jackson Pollock-style drips of dense balsamic reduction–though it was so thick and sticky it was difficult to use it as a sauce.
In one inspired entree, he sets crisped pieces of codfish in brandada (a rich puree of cod, garlic, olive oil, and cream), tosses on a sprinkle of gray-mullet caviar, and drizzles it with green-olive vinaigrette ($18); in another he sets roast salmon on an interesting puree of white beans and celery root, perfectly set off by the sweet-salty carrot jus with sherry ($17).
