Fusebox: Thinking Outside the Box
Located in an Industrial area in West Oakland, Fusebox is a small Fusion restaurant with a blend of mostly Korean and Japanese foods. Fusebox is one of my BFF’s new favorite places and I found out why when I took her for a belated birthday dinner on Friday.
We were first offered a couple of free items: a small bowl of Asian flavored popcorn and a small cup of mushroom consommé. It was a nice way to start our meal.
Our first real bite was the bacon mochi which is what I was looking forward to having seen some photos. The crisp salty bacon is wrapped around the slightly sweet chewy mochi. It was delightful.
We ordered several skewers. The first two were grilled eggplant and miso flavored green beans. These tiny skewers were simple and delicious.
The grilled shishito peppers came out next. These were a little bitter and not my favorite.
We ordered two of the corns. They were grilled and flavored with butter and peppers. These were outstanding and reminded me of eating Mexican street corn.
We were debating over the FuseBOX KFC (Korean fried chicken) or the Chicken Karaage (Japanese fried chicken). The waitress recommended the KFC so went ahead and ordered those. The chicken wings had a perfectly crisp coating and the flavor had an amazing spice.
We shared the fish entree which was an air dried boneless Rainbow Trout. This beautiful filet tasted as good as it looked. It came with some seaweed which added a nice touch of salt to each bite.
Their entrees come with a bowl of rice as well as Banchans, little Korean side dishes including homemade kimchi. I enjoyed them and did not feel overwhelmed like at many other Korean restaurants.
We orders two desserts. The first one was the Tang Granita Creamsicle. The flavor brought back wonderful childhood memories of eating Creamsicles. This was quite light as well.
We also shared the beignets. We aren’t in New Orleans, but their kitchen put up a good fight. Their beignets are made to order so they were piping hot. I rate these fried bread balls fairly high because they were not oily.
Most of the food at Fusebox is small, but packs simple tasty flavors. It is also a fun place to enjoy a variety of different foods. I can’t wait to go back.
