Fusion

haahahahaha, you guys are killing me.
-listening to all of you trying to define and critique the idea of fusion cuisine... If you all just think for a second, it is quite obvious that the cuisines of the world are all considered, "FUISION CUISINE". For example, if the Chinese never found pepper, where would the French be??? If the Chinese never made noodles, what would the Italians be eating??? or tomato sauce for that matter, which was invented by the Chinese!!! What about curry powder? Did curry powder really originate from India???I doubt that's even a "real" Indian spice!
So having said that, I can't understand why there is such a vast amount of unnecessary fuss over fusion cuisine, a cuisine that has existed for many thousands of years! Without fusion, many of the world's cuisines wouldn't have the ingredients that they have now. We have been mixing different cultural flavors since the birth of cuisine. Without fusion, we limit ourselves-our cuisine would never be able to evolve. There is more to food than "the traditional french techniques". As for me, I've never viewed myself as a slave towards the traditions of food and classical techniques; instead I believe that food should be prepared anyway and everyway in order to achieve harmony, purity, respect, and tranquility.

[chefjohnpaul]

I think what was being discussed is basically the marketing of a blend of traditional methods and cuisines to form a fusion. Since tomato sauces have been an ear mark of Southern Italian cooking for a long time then adding ginger and soy could be considered by this generation as "fusion" even though tracing back through history the tomato sauce itself may not have had a southern Italian origin. I do believe Columbus did bring tomatoes back from the Americas though. The point is that trends tend to be interested in the here and now when in reality it has all probably been said and done sometime in the past before.