Fusion Cafe, Eastwood

Within the postcode of 2122, there are now two restaurants by the name of ‘Fusion Cafe’; one in Eastwood and one in Marsfield (yep, these adjacent suburbs share the same postcode). It’s a bit confusing since they’re not the same restaurant but the one in Eastwood is the new one which opened late last year. When I walked past it last year, there were crowds outside so I thought I’d check it out.

A long shaped restaurant, when you first walk in it smells like hot milk tea! It is rather clean and modern for a Chinese cafe, although the walls are quite dull and dead, lacking the usual decor of menus boasting the day’s specials and set menus. Upon a glance of the menu, the selections are a bit boring and slightly higher priced than what I am accustomed to for Chinese food, but hopefully the actual food is better than my expectations.


Roast pork neck with honey mustard seed sauce

Today we opt for the lunch menu which gets you a main meal and hot milk tea for $10.80. The first dish is the pork neck. There is one word I have to describe this dish – uninspiring. Highly reminiscent of a poorly home cooked meal, the spaghetti and pork neck has barely any actual flavour other than the sauce which has been just lopped on top. Thankfully the sauce tastes OK with the meat (a bit strange with the spaghetti), however the enoki mushrooms on my dish are uncooked and inedible (yes I tried eating one, wondering if it could be eaten raw). The bok choy is also barely cooked and is much too crunchy. A lazy, bland dish.


Baked mango with king prawn and fish fillet

The next dish of mango prawns and fish then comes out and looks a bit more promising. The prawns and fish taste good, and the mango is fresh but I question this combination with the cheese. After a couple more bites, we notice a strange plasticky taste in the cheese to which my friend describes as “tasting like fridge”. The dish is slightly better than the previous one but it is a confused dish. I think corn would have been a much better compliment than mangoes so overall, the dish does not get a tick of approval from either of us.

The new Fusion Cafe is what I would called a classic example of Fail Fusion. Their Asian influence with Western dishes doesn’t work here which is a shame and the restaurant has a lot of improving to do if it wants to survive the tough Eastwood market. The food is confusing, the restaurant a bit dull and the pricing does not justify this. It is not somewhere I will return and there are a lot of other tasty alternatives in Eastwood, but out of the Fusion Cafes, it looks like the Marsfield one still has the lead.

Fusion Cafe
127 Rowe St, Eastwood, NSW 2122
Ph: (02) 9874 2226

Fusion Cafe on Urbanspoon

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