Try this: Andrew Coppolino's guide to fusion food

The term fusion cuisine gets bandied around with some frequency.

In fact, it's a phrase that has perhaps been rightly bashed when describing something like a cheeseburger wonton and implies chefs slapping together ingredients somewhat haphazardly.

Think of California cuisine; decades ago Wolfgang Puck put smoked salmon and roe on wood-fired pizza and fusion in "California cuisine" became a trend.

The California roll, though popular, was not originally part of a sushi menu in Japan: it came about in the 1970s in the U.S. as a sort of "gateway sushi" with California avocado (but no raw fish) created to entice Americans to try it.

But you can find in food culture much deeper relationships and historical alliances of foods and techniques that haveborrowed and copied from one another and in more sinister ways likecolonialism and hegemony.

Given that context, it's interesting to think about the connections, many examples of which we have locally.

In Waterloo region, we may think immediately of our Germanic past and the influence on our food culture that started with Pennsylvania-Dutch settlers to the area in the early years of the 19th century.

It also carriesdishes based on the "three sisters" ingredients of squash, maize and beans plants nurtured by Canada's indigenous peoples.

In its food and name (Miijidaa means "let's eat!" in Ojibway), the restaurant pays homage to our history.

Filipino cuisine flies under the radar and is under-represented locally, but it draws on Central American, Spanish, Chinese and regional Filipino ingredients and techniques. At Nuestro 88, you can eat spring rolls with chorizo served with chicharron.

Just about everyone loves barbecue, and we have access to some good venues such as Lancaster Smokehouse, Q BBQ Public House, SOS BBQ and Camp 31.

It's interesting to recognize, as you munch on ribs and pulled pork, that our pit barbecue was the "barbacoa" of an ancient Haitian people called the Taino, who were wiped out by European explorers centuries ago.

The technique today is pretty much dominated by the southern U.S., but it dates to cultures much older.

Every culture has a flatbread, whether that is pizza or pita. Inventively, Chic Pea Pita and Grill is a Middle Eastern restaurant that has taken its traditional ingredients and flavours and put them in a section of the menu called "Turkish Pizzeria" with a half-dozen selections.

The sujuk (a spicy salami-like sausage) is particularly good.Arabesque Family Restaurant also has a section of these pizza-like "manaeesh."

There is also a crossover with Korean and Japanese dishes and often the nationalities of the cooks and restaurant owners. Korean dishes often migrate onto sushi menus and vice versa.

Ken, the owner and chef at the popular Ken Sushi House, often cited as one of the Region's best, goes by both Yim and Hayashi surnames. On the menu, you'll find the usual sushi and sashimi suspects but also the Korean bowl hwe dup bap of chopped raw fish along with bulgogi and kalbi. It makes for a delicious mix.

And we can include in the mix Izna and Kinkaku Izakaya (and their soon-to-be-opened location in Uptown Waterloo).

Vietnamese cuisinetakes a cue from colonial France serving delicious "satays" (from the French saut) and itsfamous banh mi sandwich, which includes mayonnaise and a baguette.

After the fall of Saigon, enterprising Vietnamese cooks tweaked the ingredients and created food trucks and stalls to suit their needs and arranged the platter into a sandwich.

Three of the best places for banh mi locally are Givral Deli, Wooden Boat Food Company and Bao Sandwich Bar.

The foundation of French cookery is ubiquitous in dining. Loloan Lobby Bar and Bhima's Warung in Waterloo, the latter celebrating an amazing 25 years in business, use parts of that foundation for creating unique dishes with Asian ingredients and techniques.

Immediately coming to mind are the foie gras potstickers with peanut dipping sauce or a dessert of jackfruit and crme Anglaise at Bhima's. Loloan will serve you hue-style pho consomm and a foie gras terrine with kumquat sambal.

Hakka Hut and Shinwa Asian prepare Chili Chicken and Manchurian pakoras: "hakka" dishes that represent southeastern Chinese cooking with an Indian twist.

And while the cooking of the vastly populated subcontinent is highly regional, most Indian restaurants prepare a vindaloo, a hot curry dish of meat marinated in wine and garlic. Still, that word is derived from the Portuguese "vinha d'alhos."

Cooks in the western Indian Goa province, which was once a Portuguese colony, tweaked the dish to their needs and the ingredients at hand.