Fusion Restaurant — Restaurant in Lecce

My wife and I visited this restaurant for lunch earlier today, with the intention of trying something different during our trip to this lovely region of the country.

The restaurant has some positive aspects: it is spacious and well air conditioned, offering welcome respite to the afternoon heat. The shrimps in panko (gamberi in panko) were delicious and my beef with sancho pepper (manzo, verdure croccanti, fondo bruno e sancho pepper) was tender, even if the portion was quite small.

However, there are several negative aspects to this restaurant which soured our experience, both literally and figuratively. The chicken yakitori taco (Tacos Pollo Yakitori) was dry and overcooked. The coup de grâce, though, was the poor quality of the uramaki, with the ebi mayo and goma both leaving a very unpleasant sour aftertaste. This was very unexpected, given that the restaurant prominently features sushi dishes in its menu. The owner's responses to the negative reviews here, including to my wife's review, are rude, condescending and dismissive, insinuating that their customers have only eaten at mediocre 'all you can eat' sushi restaurants and lack the refined palate to judge the quality of their sushi. We have both eaten at a la carte sushi restaurants and sushi bars all over the world - and have tried some of the freshest salmon in Norway and Scotland - and we can confidently say that the uramaki was disappointing. Given the mix of positive and negative reviews on Google and TripAdvisor, I hope our experience was a one-off and that others are more fortunate than we are when choosing to dine here.

Edit: you'll notice the (expected) condescending tone in their response below, despite mentioning having high quality salmon in countries where salmon is sourced from. Salmon can go bad, and rice can become stale for various reasons, regardless of its source. We are not the first to point out problems with the fish, as indicated by some earlier reviews, and given the half-hearted nature of their apology, we don't expect to...

I've eaten here 5 or 6 times over the past few years and it was good for awhile and then a year or so ago I found it to be less than good. However, I tried it again this past summer with friends and it was pretty good again. Then I went several days ago and it was not good. I had a mixed plate of sushi and nigiri. Incredible, but all the rice was undercooked and crunchy. How do you make that kind of mistake? The fish itself was so so. Then my black cod arrived. I immediately saw that it was not going to be great. Cod is a fish that freezes well and this was supposedly Alaskan cod, which would be frozen, of course. However, it looked slightly freezer burnt or it was left out and then refrozen. The taste was a bit tough and gummy in parts. It was a disappointing experience. I give sushi restaurants here a bit of slack as I lived in Seattle for 15 years where all the seafood was extremely fresh, but this dinner didn't really meet the basic bar for quality. A day later I told a friend of my experience and he said he never goes there anymore and was a very regular customer for years. He now goes to a different sushi restaurant...

Ho frequentato questo ristorante sin dagli inizi, sono sempre stato un grande fan della loro filosofia e della loro cucina. Negli anni ho assistito ai loro momenti alti ( altissimi) ma aimé anche i loro bassi. Dalla mia ultima esperienza (erano un po' di anni che non ci andavo) ho avuto l impressione di un ristorante alla ricerca di riscatto con la voglia di aggrapparsi a quei periodi di gloria incontrastata! Ma nulla di tutto ciò purtroppo. Non basta un arredamento minimal con luci soffuse per maschera gli anni della location, che necessiterebbe a mio avviso di una vera ristrutturazione ( radicale ). Ok il tovagliolo profumato di cortesia, i ragazzi in sala fanno del loro meglio per farti sentire in un ristorante di livello, ma purtroppo manca la sostanza!!! È non è solo un fattore di, si mangia bene o si mangia male, perché in fondo la cucina non è male, ingredienti sono di qualità i piatti preparati bene mah...basta niente di più. Spiace lasciare questa recensione, considerando che ho dei bellissimi ricordi in questo ristorante, ma il raffronto con gli anni passati è per me doveroso e...