Contemporary fusion foods: How are they to be defined, and when do they succeed/fail?

Fusion cuisine is all the rage these days, but how, exactly, should it be defined? One might all too easily think of it as an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, given fusion cuisine's current popularity in the food media. However, take a suitably long-term view, and it soon becomes clear that most of the foods that we eat today actually represent a fusion of ingredients, flavours, components, recipes, styles, and/or food philosophies. That said, there would appear to be a widespread contemporary interest in fusion foods, especially amongst food marketers and the consuming public at large. The latter's ‘hunger’ for the many putatively new fusion foods introduced into the food marketplace in recent years can perhaps be framed within a broader interest in all things novel, and experimental, in the world of cuisine these days. That said, it is important to note that coming up with genuinely new fusion food products, or dishes, is not as easy as it might at first seem, in part, for the reasons outlined herein. All too easily, new fusion cuisine can end-up leading to ‘con-fusion’, especially if the consumer doesn’t know how to ‘read’ the new culinary creation. Meanwhile other, apparently new, creations turn out, on closer inspection, to have older (often forgotten) roots. This review highlights the need to find the right name with which to correctly flag where exactly the innovation lies, as well as stressing the challenges associated with navigating the border between flavours that blend/merge and fusion foods.