RESTAURANT REVIEW : Eye-Opening Enticements at Fusion

South Bay Fusion, a few blocks from the ocean in Hermosa Beach, is a small, lovely new restaurant opened this year by chef David Slatkin, formerly of Descanso, and partner Shauna Sinay.

Just inside the door, there’s a bar area, where you can perch on a high stool or sit at a counter with a ringside view of a very busy kitchen. The dining room--indeed, the whole interior--is restrained, tasteful, designed to show things to their best advantage. White walls. White tablecloths. Small beakers of fresh flowers on each table. Round sconces hug the walls like bowls of soft light. “This place makes me want to dress up,” says a friend. Some other diners feel that way too, although this is a beach town, and beach chic invariably includes at least someone wearing shorts. The only problem with Fusion’s design is a very low ceiling coupled with a tile floor; when the dining room is full and the sound system’s on, the noise level gets so high, everyone starts shouting at each other. Conversation became first exhausting, then impossible. We skip dessert just to escape the noise and leave muttering something about South Bay Confusion.

After that, I confined my visits to weeknights, when the din is tolerable.

What entices me back to South Bay Fusion is Slatkin’s cooking. At Descanso, Slatkin’s cross-cultural menu resembled a complicated, cross-referenced encyclopedia of tropical culinary impulses that, rumor has it, intimidated the locals. Now, on his own, Slatkin proves he can be innovative and pretty darn user-friendly.

There is no confusion about what to expect here: fusion cooking, i.e. the cross-cultural eclecticism that so many chefs attempt and so few do well.

Appetizers are a good portent of things to come: We recognize the tuna poke (pronounced pokey) from Descanso, a pretty hut of fresh raw tuna reinforced with fried won ton that houses ripe avocado. Crisped lobster and crab cakes, sweet and springy inside, come with a juicy tomato and corn relish.

Soups, like a stew of white beans, chicken and autumn vegetables, tend toward muddiness. The house romaine salad has too sweet a dressing. But the pan-fried cashew-encrusted goat cheese on sweet beefsteak tomato slices and a wild leek vinaigrette is a knock-out.

When Slatkin’s cooking hits, it’s eye-opening, some of the best fusion food around--and certainly some of the most reasonably priced. He has a great, almost comic sense of what ingredients illuminate and enliven each other and he’s especially deft with fish: A roasted white fish sits on a mound of red beans and lo mein noodles that tastes like Chinese barbecue meets Boston baked beans. Taken individually, these components baffle, but load up a fork with a flake of sweet, subtle fish, a curl of smoky noodle and a few sharp sweet beans and it’s a revelation. Slatkin loves risk. Beautifully charred rare tuna steak sits atop chewy “black” rice in a pool of hot pink beet wasabi cream that looks like Pepto Bismol. Close your eyes if you have to: This is a stunning plate of food. Who knew beets and tuna were a marriage made in heaven?

A Southern favorite (‘cue and slaw) is here adapted for the Pacific Rim: Meaty, moist grilled baby back ribs are heaped on creamy jasmine rice and a chipper Asian slaw--another hit.

Sometimes, however, Slatkin’s multifarious approach gets muddled. Roasted corn and shrimp bisque is overcooked mixed vegetables in a brown roux cream gravy scattered with a few deep-fried, tasty rock shrimp.

Skirt steak has a good flavor, but the apricot and ginger barbecue sauce tastes murky. Lamb medallions are sinewy and the musty, dark apple-brandy sauce swamps everything else on the plate. Slatkin also offers a nightly five-course tasting menu for the bargain price of $28.

Dessert pickings are pretty slim: often only cheesecake served erect, a narrow pyramid stained with fresh berry coulis. If Slatkin ever turns his creative attention to desserts, though, it should be a sight worth eating.

* South Bay Fusion, 934 Hermosa Ave., Hermosa Beach, (310) 376-9300. Open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Beer and wine served. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $45-$60.