STYLE / RESTAURANTS : DESIGNER PALATE
The sleek, blue-and-green glass geometry of the Pacific Design Center plays on your senses in a way that’s both exhilarating and calming as it reflects the sky, the streets and nearby buildings. I’d always admired its architecture from afar but never, until recently, had a compelling reason to go inside. Now a red neon sign, in small and precise lowercase letters, boldly proclaims “fusion,’ the design center’s smart, new restaurant at the back entrance off San Vicente Boulevard.
As you approach the door, a huge video screen at the end of a hallway glows with clips from vintage movies, an abstract video or runway fashion shows. You might even be startled to see yourself up there on the screen, bigger than life and in full color, caught in the act of opening the door.
Inside fusion at pdc (the official name), it’s clear the designers have taken great care with the visual details, starting with the menu’s clean graphics and typeface, easy to read even if the food descriptions are sometimes cryptic. Cobalt and emerald water glasses are gratifying to touch. Stainless-steel flatware is hefty in the hand. Salt and pepper grinders are the kind that appear to have the Museum of Modern Art seal of approval.
Waiters are sweetly earnest, explaining and recommending dishes, intent on earning a guest’s return visit. And it can’t be easy attracting diners here: The place is invisible from Melrose Avenue and San Vicente, and, after business hours, the building looks closed.
At lunchtime, though, fusion’s large, open room is sunny and full of life. Tables are polished planes of pale beechwood set on flared silvery pedestals. Chairs have elegant lines. Booths and curvaceous banquettes are covered in opulent fabrics. The long blond maple bar has video monitors overhead and sapphire velvet stools. And the courtyard just outside is set with marigold-yellow umbrellas and lipstick-red chairs.
Fusion’s smart, refined menu is the work of consulting chef Bruce Marder of West Beach Cafe and Rebecca’s in Venice and chef Shari Lynn Robins, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who cooked at the trendy Coffee Shop in Manhattan and, more recently, at Barney Greengrass in Beverly Hills. Here, Marder and Robins have created contemporary comfort food.
Start with lobster spring rolls crunchy with haricots verts and garnished with nori confetti. The parmesan potato crepe, stuffed with mashed potatoes wears a stripe of vivid green herb sauce across its middle. A bowl of crimson vegetable borscht laced with potatoes, celery and beets is one of the better vegetarian dishes I’ve tasted. (But with the piroshki on the side, is this an appetizer or supper?)
At lunch, salads can be ordered by the full- or half-portion. I like the vinegary pile of frisee with a warmed nugget of Crottin de Chavignol, a chalky goat cheese from France’s Loire valley, as well as the peppered ahi tuna with haricots verts , matchsticks of red pepper, potatoes and anchovies, dressed in a sharp Pommery mustard vinaigrette. The otherwise delicious baby spinach salad with rare lamb and crisped bacon, however, is drenched in dressing.
Pasta that is truly Italian in taste and texture is the real surprise. Robins clearly knows what she’s doing. Her impressive agnolotti , long supple triangles with an exotic amaretti- sweetened pumpkin filling are very close to (if slightly sweeter than) Mantua’s famous tortelli di zucca. I also like the austere ravioli Rocca Reggiano, neat little pockets with zigzag edges, filled with cheese and fragrant with thyme.
Robins also knows her sandwiches. There’s a terrific honey-roasted-pork sandwich with red cabbage slaw on toasted country white and a chicken club piled high with white meat, pancetta , arugula and coleslaw on toasted rye. The burger is substantial, made with flavorful beef and a dense house-made sesame-seed bun, but does it really need such a thick slice of red onion? It comes with potato salad or fries. Take the fries.
Chicken breast dressed up with shiitake mushroom caps and a slew of Mediterranean vegetables is a surprisingly appealing entree. A perfectly pink and delicate slice of veal liver ordered at lunch one day is lovely, garnished with a couple of bracelets of onion and a row of square potato slices stacked like dominos. Another night at dinner, the liver is strong-tasting and the portion dauntingly large.
While the food is usually good to very good, the kitchen does trip up when dishes become too self-conscious. Scallop tostada is deconstructed to a crisp corn disk heaped with slivered radicchio and ringed with seared scallops in an orange ranchera salsa. Pretty, but how are you supposed to eat it? The “classic pappardelle, roasted rabbit, rabbit sausage” sounded great. The few wide ribbon noodles are delicious, but while the rabbit is beautifully roasted and the sausage handcrafted, both were fairly bland (almost always the case with commercially raised rabbit). And if you’re going to put steak on the menu, it should be memorable; this one isn’t.
Fusion remains a secret address at night, when the room feels very different. Surfaces look hard and unwelcoming; the lighting, a little dreary. Who would ever suspect it’s open until 1:30 a.m? Still, as we leave late one evening, an interesting crowd trickles in.
The restaurant is open continuously from 11 a.m., which makes it a good place for a bite at any odd hour. Worn out from shopping for the sofa or kilim of your dreams? Kick back over dessert and coffee. The hot fudge sundae boasts a true fudge sauce that hardens when it hits the vanilla bean ice cream. There’s also a not-too-sweet mocha flan in creme anglaise. And if you’ve got 25 minutes, go for the chocolate souffle, tall and elegant, showered with powdered sugar. Not a do-or-die dark chocolate, it’s subtler, closer to milk chocolate than bittersweet but just as satisfying.
The real test of fusion won’t be the food, I suspect, but whether people are willing to go out of their way to find this savvy new restaurant. If they do, they’ll find it can be worth the effort.
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FUSION AT PDC
CUISINE: Euro-Asian. AMBIENCE: Hip restaurant-bar with outdoor seating. BEST DISHES: Potato crepe, agnolotti , honey-roasted pork sandwich, veal liver, hot fudge sundae. WINE PICKS: Volpe Pasini Pinot Grigio “Zuc,” 1993 . FACTS: 8687 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles (enter on San Vicente); (310) 659-6012. Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday. Dinner for two, food only, $42 to $86. Corkage $10. Free validated parking.
