Closing Time (II): Our Eerily Prescient Warning About a Catastrophic Fusion Meltdown

Now that this site is a couple of years old, it’s fun to look back to see how our predictions have panned out. Back in August 2007, when we saw that a restaurant called “Fusion” was about to be opened up on Budapest’s touristy Váci utca, we snarkily wrote the following:

Of course, it’s never smart to review a restaurant before it’s even opened, and we’re happy to be pleasantly surprised once this one is. And if it does turn out to be a total flop, that’s okay too, because it may finally convince local restaurateurs that Asian-fusion means more than just some Asian-looking interior design accents, some bland Asian-seeming menu items, and an extra 50% on the bill.

Last week we saw that Fusion had closed, barely a year after opening – and before we even got a chance to properly review it. But we did have a chance to eat there once, sometime before the start of the global market meltdown that is at least partly responsible for its demise. So we might as well see how our forecast played out.

In terms of what we ate, we were pleasantly surprised to find it less bland than we feared, though we only stuck to one part of the menu (Chinese). Above you can see a plate roast duck (Ft 3,390) and below that some hot and sour soup (Ft 990), spring rolls (Ft 2,390) and Sichuan beef (Ft 3,300). Note, however, that all were just slight variations on traditional standards, rather than examples of genuine “fusion” cooking. For this plus one other soup, four beers, a glass of house wine and an Aperol Spritz cocktail, we paid Ft 22,704, including a 10% felszolgálási díj (service charge), which seemed almost exactly 50% overpriced. And did we mention the Asian-looking interior design accents?

Speaking of the Asian-looking interior design accents, it’s hard to believe that the owners of the space will now quickly gut it, as it was obviously monstrously expensive to put the thing together. Instead, our advice would be to try again, with more of a focus on the very fetching cocktail bar (above), a slimmer and more value-priced menu, and a less banal name. We can’t promise it would work, given the still-imploding local economy. But we were already right once.