Top five for fusion food

The Sugar Club, 21 Warwick Street, W1 (020 7437 7776)

Head chef David Selex has a Pacific Rim cooking style, though prices are high. A first-course of crispy softshell crab with redonionand-lychee salad at £11.50 plus 12.5 per cent service seemed high, considering the crab tasted slightly over the hill. An interesting choice of wines, particularly from the New World. What is unassailable is the service: friendly, patient, obliging.

Cinnamon Cay, 87 Lavender Hill, SW11 (020 7801 0932)

Australasian - more or less a synonym for fusion - food is offered at reasonable prices. An open kitchen and a wide pavement terrace complete the agreeable neighbourhood formula. There are hits and misses in the cooking, but low prices and good-heartedness make one forgiving.

The Providores, 109 Marylebone High Street, W1 (020 7935 6175)

New Zealander Peter Gordon is the patron saint of fusion cooking. A Spanish influence is apparent in the ground-floor tapa room, where small meals are served. In the first-floor dining room, you find pan-fried sea bass on nigella-roast butternut squash with curried lentils, and spinach, coconut and coriander labneh, which backpack round a few continents.

East@West, 13-15 West Street, WC2 (020 7010 8600)

A tendency to fuse Eastern ingredients with Western techniques has been firmed up here into a defining style of small, intricate, predominantly Asian dishes served as fixed, multicourse menus. A typical assembly is blue-fin tuna sashimi with toasted seaweed, shiso sprouts and ginger blossom.

Osia, 11 Haymarket, SW1 (020 7976 1313)

A Raw Bar dish, such as parsleycrusted venison tataki with soya honey sesame dressing, and a first course, such as seared foie gras with soft daikon radish, asparagus and teriyaki glaze, certainly fit the definition of fusion food. A stylish, interesting place with a spacious, cool bar.