Food Fusion Findings

Fusion foods have a 50% chance at being damn tasty…but often they end up being damn disgusting.

New fusion food products seem to be taking over almost every grocery store aisle.

A perfect example would be the sushi scene. In Las Vegas I experienced food-nirvana at Sushi Samba; a brilliant restaurant that perfectly pairs Japanese with Peruvian and Brazilian cuisine to make some impressive dishes. But then at San Antonio’s Sushi Zushi, I was bothered by a menu that took Tex-Mex ingredients and crammed them into seaweed and rice…to me, adding beans and cheese to rice and wrapping it up is called a burrito, NOT sushi… and it is not something I want to eat alongside premium cuts of raw fish.

But food fusions also form outside of the fancy restaurant realm and professional chef’s ‘creative’ menus. And food fusions do not have to be made from multiple ethnic cuisines either… You can walk down almost any grocery aisle and find ‘new’ things that blend tastes from various staple products to create something unexpected. The produce aisle is filed wish so much ‘hybrid’ fruit that it is starting to piss me off how difficult it is to find a freaking apple that is JUST an apple and not some melon-citrus-berry-grape infused thing. Even my beloved cereal aisle is falling victim to the fusion trend…

I just picked up a box of “Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch.” After one look at a bowl of the stuff, I realized that this ‘new’ cereal was conceived when ‘Mr. Honey Bunches of Oats’ decided to have a child with ‘Mrs. Honey Nut Cheerios.’ Clearly the best parts from both of these cereals were combined into this ‘Medley Crunch.’

Did this new fusion cereal replace my beloved Honey Bunches of Oats? NO…all it did was make me more loyal to those beautiful ‘bunches’

I LOVE Honey Bunches of Oats…or HBoO as the kids at the back of the bus call it. And while I have never been addicted to Cheerios, they never really disappoint like some cereals…The fusion of the breakfast staple ‘Cheerios’ with those amazingly tasty nuggets that we all search for in a box of HBoO, paired well together and made for an enjoyable morning treat.

But before I could pour a second bowl of the stuff, I realized that the most stratifying part of the cereal was the ‘bunches’ and that the Cheerios were just getting in the way of what I really wanted. I then realized that this fusion cereal was nothing too special once its novelty had worn off. I felt like I was just eating a diluted box of  one of my favorite cereals, Honey Bunches of Oats.

Fusion foods, while they may be interesting and become favorites for some, can often times lead to impulsive purchases that leave you craving for ‘pure’ forms of your go-to staples.

While enjoyable and not bad, these ‘Cheerios’ only made me crave my old favorites…Dozer, the Fed Up dog, may get to finish off this box of cereal.