Fusion Gives Cocktails an Interesting New Twist

We were pleased to hear that the new Fusion restaurant at the Pacific Design Center came up with a concept other than the now routine cigar-smoking area.

Attached to the main bar is a small martini bar offering seven variations on the classic cocktail. They include a Mexican martini (add a bit of tequila and lime juice), an Asian Martini (sake) and a Fusion martini (cranberry and grapefruit juice and a few other things).

Purists, of course, will find the whole exercise shocking, but Bruce Marder, the West Beach Cafe / Rebecca’s / Broadway Deli chef who created the menu, maintains that as long as the cocktail is shaken and poured into a long-stemmed martini glass, “There are no rules.”

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The Louvre in L.A.: We aren’t going to tell you about the opening of another New York art gallery here. But there is new evidence that L.A. is getting less provincial.

A shop called La Boutique Musee quietly opened at 8606 Melrose Ave. offering reproductions from the Louvre Museum in Paris. It’s the only shop of its kind outside Paris. Among the treasures are copies of Marie Antoinette’s floral Limoges china and reproductions of the pearl drop earrings worn by a figure in a Georges de la Tour painting.

Although it may not be everyone’s idea of a stocking stuffer, the top of the line is a large reproduction of a King Tut figure made of resin that resembles bronze and sells for $10,000.

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Ghastly ‘Do: Scary movie trend watch: At Lunaria restaurant, we recently spotted an attractive woman who was obviously done up as Sharon Stone, circa 1970s, from “Casino.” Her blond hair was teased and straight, her brows dark and her eyes heavily lined in black. (Though she probably would have looked better doing the natural, short-haired Annette Bening look from “The American President,” at least she didn’t have her hair cut in the annoying bowl cut favored by Emma Thompson in “Carrington.”)