Fusion cuisine, Steel says, is ultimately a failed fad.

Tanya Steel: It’s very interesting.  I think in the last 10 years there was a huge explosion of fusion cuisine.  And it was really bred by the fact that chefs in America more than anything were very excited to find ingredients in other countries that they could then come and adapt and fuse with other cuisines.  I don’t think that it was very successful by and large.  I think there are some chefs like … who kind of took French and Vietnamese or Asian and paired them beautifully.  Or … who took kind of, you know, Japanese and Peruvian and melded those in interesting fashion.  But by and large fusion cuisine was kind of a mistake, and I do think that we’re coming back to the more pure, literal, more classic roots of those cuisines that we all love.  And something that slow foods, which is a fantastic movement that was really begun in Italy and has spread throughout the country, that’s what they really espouse.  And it’s a very great philosophy to follow, and that is really to embrace your culture’s classic cuisine and ingredients, and to continue to keep that going because that is very much our history.