The top Asian chefs making fusion food fashionable again around the world

Remember the “F” word?

“Fusion” has come a long way, such cuisine having risen again to acceptable heights as young chefs combine their techniques with kitchen know-how passed down through the generations.

Asian cuisine was at the forefront of the fusion revolution and has suffered from the association: “Yes, we cater to the fish eater, spag-bol-lover and even the vegan-flexitarian in your family, so please join us for a bad meal.”

Food historians trace fusion cuisine back to the 1980s, and restaurants that wanted to cater to affluent, urban professionals. Increasingly gentrified New York, Los Angeles and London led the charge, the unsavoury disguise used to smuggle Asian cuisine into Western mouths.

As an Australian-born Chinese, I remember my mum’s fusion meals, admirable attempts to help my sister and I adapt to our cultural surroundings. I did not appreciate the spaghetti two-minute noodles, pizza on Chinese flatbread with shiitake mushrooms (an enigma in ’80s Australia) and rice balls wrapped in seaweed, now popular lunchbox items.

Cross-cultural culinary mash-ups have come a long way; fear of sesame-crusted tuna with wasabi roasted potatoes perhaps still exists in pockets around the world, but a brigade of skilful Asian chefs are stepping up to the plate to help rehabilitate the F word, even if, like Nobu Matsuhisa, they refuse to use it to describe their cuisine.

Yet, authenticity remains elusive at gourmet chain restaurants, which led me to seek out dishes created by lesser-known but wonder-working Asian chefs. The manipulation of ingre­dients, techniques and culinary know-how are top rate at the restaurants listed below, where East and West are fused plausibly and the results should be acceptable to even the pickiest gourmet.