Fusion: North Silver Street, Aberdeen
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FOR a new restaurant, Fusion really does make you work hard to book a table.
Just finding a simple phone number for the North Silver Street eatery was like solving a puzzle in the Da Vinci Code.
After having no luck with directory inquiries, I only managed to trace the elusive number after trawling the internet for planning applications.
So after going to all that hassle, I was really hoping it would live up to expectations.
And thankfully it more than did.
Right from the start, a couple of small touches made this place stand out.
First, as we dithered between two wine choices, our helpful waiter suggested we try a free sample of both then choose our favourite. A very nice touch indeed.
The second thing was when the pre-meal amuse-bouche arrived.
This trio of truly delicious bite-sized morsels definitely got the tastebuds ready for the main event. A three-course meal at Fusion is £24.95 (with supplements of £3 to £5 on some dishes). Two courses are £19.95
To start I had scallops with crispy pancetta. While the scallops were a tad on the titchy side, they were full of flavour – especially when dragged through the potato puree with grain mustard.
Meanwhile, my fiancee was devouring her monstrously-sized tempura prawns with home-made chilli dipping sauce.
My main course of roast star anise duck breast was a surprisingly subtle dish. Any fears that the sweet ponzu sauce, sake-braised mushrooms, sugar snap peas and soba noodles would be a sinus-clearing experience went out the window with my first bite. The chef had balanced all the flavours perfectly.
Our other main course of salmon with lemon and mint couscous and cucumber threads also proved “different but delicious”. The dill and shallot vinaigrette soaked into the couscous so every mouthful was moist and fresh.
We finished the meal by sharing a white chocolate and stem ginger cheesecake – perhaps the most lacklustre of the dishes we’d tried, partly because they served it in a deep glass, so we had to really drill down to get a bit of the rock-hard biscuit base.
That was a minor quibble though.
Fusion may be new on the restaurant scene but if it keeps this standard up, I think it’ll be here for a long time to come.
