Fuzion House
580 Church St., Toronto, 416-944-9888. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $150.
Patrick Wiese fell in love and got married. Which would not be our business, except that Wiese, who was living happily in Chicago at the time of his encounter with Cupid's arrow, fell hard for a Canadian, and moved to Toronto. Not his first choice. Wiese had been Oprah's personal chef. Once in Toronto, he was hired (last fall) as the first chef at the about-to-open Fuzion.
Let us give thanks, then, to Wiese's Canadian love, who was clearly the instrument of so many delectables. For Wiese is a fun chef, long on exuberance and big flavours. The 120-year-old house that was originally home to department-store founder Robert Simpson has been many restaurants in the past 30 or so years. None of them have been distinguished, including the most recent, Le Petit Liban. But the old house is a Victorian grande dame, complete with a splendid front courtyard that will be the perfect place to dine al fresco any minute now. Walking through to the restaurant's entrance is delightful, thanks to fab floral urns, big candle lanterns and birch trees.
The restaurant is no less charming inside. When dining in the gay village, I always feel, felicitously, that I could be in New York, thanks to the out-there friendly charm of the waiters. I often feel that wait staff in other parts of Toronto use formality as a substitute for professional serving skills -- that they (mistakenly) believe that if they act like a stuffed shirt, we'll be fooled and think they're pros. The restaurant culture of boystown is purposefully informal (as it tends to be in any ghetto, where one specific group of people gathers for community sustenance), which makes talking to the waiters more fun.
Especially when they kick off the Fuzion food frolic by bringing us house-baked dried-tomato focaccia, and cornbread with sweet butter infused with ginger. Let chef choose your appetizers. One evening, he sent out oyster shooters: a shot glass with one perfectly fresh oyster suspended in big bang chili-spiked plum sake topped with chives. This baby goes down hot and sweet, but it's not for the faint of heart.
Next to the shooters were delicate pot-stickers of duck confit and Chinese cabbage, the confit giving off the sweet cinnamon scent of five spice powder. One was hard pressed not to drink the sauce, a perfectly balanced translucent mix of pomegranate, soy and sugar. Chef's final appetizer salvo was lamb chops well marinated in tamarind and curry for a complex spicy/sour bite. Beside the chops was a tiny perfect dollop of intensely boiled-down date confit, and under them was a small smear of mint jelly with a coriander backstory to rescue it from banality.
The menu lists salads under the heading "interim," and who can resist another course when it's from the vegetable kingdom, and hence possible to justify as part of one's daily fibre requirement? Fuzion salad is a symphony of greens, all impeccably fresh: long crunchy tatsoi sprouts, tiny red beet seedlings and edamame, with small white enoki mushrooms and sweet peppers, all in a vaguely Asian sweet chili vinaigrette. Asparagus salad is a grand idea of barely grilled asparagus (oh, harbinger of spring) with crunchy bacon chunks, scallions and endive, but it is overwhelmed by too much red onion and lemon.
Regulars prize the skate among mains. Skate is an unsung fish hero, often overlooked but lovely in its white fleshy firmness. This rendition is a big wow. The skate has been rolled in hot, hot spices and cooked fast. It's served with charming tomato-inflected polenta, wilted kale (with more flavour than kale usually has), sweet little baby corns and even sweeter rhubarb compote (a clever contrast to the big, bold spice on the fish).
The second-best main is the partly boned and perfectly cooked quail with sweet Indian spices, stuffed with dried apricots. The tart of roasted spring turnips and the sweet of reduced curry sauce make a fine balance.
Bison is the weakest link among main courses. Ontario bison is cooked nicely in a not-too-sweet maple and stout glaze, but nothing can rescue this hunk of buffalo from being a big, boring brown chunk of meat on a bone. Ho-hum. Its accompanying Brussels sprouts are perfectly cooked and have fine flavour, but the gratin of (slightly undercooked) potatoes has too much cream that didn't get absorbed. No spud-loving gastronome would ever consign beloved potatoes to such a watery grave.
As for love, I have seldom met a custard I didn't like, and crème brûlée is a swoon-fest unless screwed up pretty badly. It's not. The trio of petite crème brûlées is an orgy of butterfat: 1) nicely spiced pumpkin, 2) pleasantly sweet chai and 3) killer dark chocolate espresso. They also do a chocoholic's fix of deep, dark molten chocolate cake with Mexican chili, spiced chocolate ganache and an impeccable chocolate biscotti -- dipped in chocolate! Skip the pear poached in sauvignon blanc. Its accompanying cornbread cake is dry, and the candied rosemary twig is cute but not really a food in my book.
Regardless, chef Wiese gets an A for effort. Having the imagination to dream a candied rosemary twig, and the passion to bother doing it (not that easy), is the kind of guy he is: passionate enough to follow his love across an international border, and to cook all the way from his heart.
Spicemeister Greg Couillard opened his Spice Room in Hazelton Lanes last week. Call 416-935-0000. More anon.
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