Do you remember the four-course meal gum from the movie, Charlie in the Chocolate Factory? Well, Mars and Hershey haven’t come up with the gum yet but American chefs are opening restaurants like crazy, a result of the new fad in cuisine known as fusion. Fusion cuisine is developed when two mutually exclusive styles of cuisine are fused into one. For example, I recently ate at a restaurant that served lasagna with green chili sauce on it instead of marinara. Three questions come to mind when considering fusion cuisine. First, does green chili really belong on lasagna? Are our traditional styles of cooking so tired and lame that we need to hybridize them into a casserole-esque redux that resembles 1970s fake-n-bake dinners?

I wanted to find a few restaurants in Santa Fe that have taken hold of the fusion fad and run away with it. Where else could I turn to but SantaFeLunch.com. I figured if anybody would know where one could find a sushi-baklava roll with which to stuff my face, SantaFeLunch.com would! I was amazed at the various restaurants that were cross-listed in multiple style categories. I figured, these were great places to start to experience fusion cuisine.

Well, smack my ass and call me a momma’s boy, but fusion is fun! Green chili DOES taste good on lasagna. Now, I’ll confess that I didn’t find a sushi-baklava roll (and frankly, that sounds completely disgusting), but I did find some choices that won me over. Interested in fusing your cuisine? Check out SantaFeLunch.com.