Not many people would stay for a meal at a restaurant after one of its appetizers burned his or her tongue. But given Pacific Fusion’s inexpensive food and overall good taste, the restaurant is worth sticking around.

The décor of the room plays on dark tones with brown chairs, maroon walls and dark gray curtains on the windows. You can choose to dine in the main dining room with tables and chairs or at the sushi bar. Its standout feature is in a separate room, where you’re free to dine and sit seiza style, a Japanese style of sitting.

Pacific Fusion features Asian food inspired by Chinese, Japanese and Thai cuisines. It offers a few styles of Thai cuisines, like red curry dishes, tom yum soup and pad thai. Under the Japanese category, there are eight different bento box meals and 12 signature sushi rolls. The Chinese cuisines include mussel with black bean sauce and crispy roast duck, to name a few.

I started my dining experience with agedashi tofu as an appetizer. It’s a soft tofu that is carefully tossed, covered in tempura flakes and fried until it was crispy on the outside, yet much softer on the inside.

The appetizer, which cost $3.95, came with a house ginger sauce on the side for dipping. The waiter gave me two different hot sauces on the side, Sriracha and oil infused with chili peppers and red chili pepper flakes. I enjoy spicy food, so I mixed a spoon of Sriracha and the spicy oil into my black sauce.

It was brought out to the table straight from the fryer, so I suggest waiting five minutes before taking your first bite. I learned my lesson the hard way and slightly burned my tongue. In any case, the fried tofu was delicious. This appetizer came with six pieces of tofu cut into chunks 2 inches long, 1 inch wide and 1 inch high.

Next came our shrimp chow fun, which is a wide and flat rice stir-fry noodle dish, and two signature sushi rolls: the Pacific roll and the dragon roll.

The chow fun was seasoned with the house sauce and tossed with onions, scallions and shrimp. The noodles were a bit overcooked; there was no need for much chewing, as you could easily mush the noodles with your tongue. The flavors were mild, delicious and not too salty. Even better, it was a large dish for only $6.75. I enjoyed it further with a drizzle of the spicy chili oil.

The presentation of the dish wasn’t very attractive. It could have used a bit more color, since the dish was mostly a pale light brown. Maybe more chopped scallions for garnish would’ve done the trick.

The two sushi signature rolls were packed with flavor. The Pacific roll held raw and spicy puréed salmon inside. It was topped with fish roe, eel, avocado and tempura flakes to add crunchy texture. The dragon roll wasn’t much different from the Pacific roll — it had crabmeat, salmon and cucumber inside the roll — and had the same toppings, minus the fish roe.

The plating was beautiful and full of vibrant colors. Both sushi rolls were laid out over a long, green leaf and a zig-zag, hand-designed pattern of spicy mayo and sweet hoisin sauce. Each roll cost $10.95, but it was worth every penny.

Overall, Pacific Fusion is a great place to enjoy delicious Asian cuisines of many varieties. Most of the appetizers didn’t cost more than $5, and most of the entrées weren’t more than $13 . This restaurant is a great place to stay on budget.

Published on January 12, 2014 at 11:51 pm

Contact Vekonda: vluangap@syr.edu