Fusing cuisines for an over-the-top effect

THE GOSSIPING GOURMET

Ever since Michael Kang opened Five Feet restaurant 20 years ago, people have puzzled over the name. Wisely, Michael has never confirmed or denied anyone’s speculations. In fact, his website now features a contest soliciting explanations. Our favorite is this: The restaurant has three owners; one of them has only one leg.

Innovative from the start, Michael introduced Asian Fusion to Orange County. The stripped-down, bare- bones architecture of the restaurant was the first of its kind in Laguna. The pencil portraits on the wall of the people involved in the opening of the restaurant has become the ever-evolving mural of customers, bringing the community into the restaurant, just as Michael has entered into the community as a philanthropist and patron of the arts.

What a treat to drive into a designated parking lot right next to a restaurant in downtown Laguna. As you enter Five Feet, there is a tiny little foyer where with luck you won’t have to wait, but on weekends, the place is packed.

The nice thing is that while you wait, you can study the current art exhibit or try to figure out who’s who in the mural. The dining room is industrial chic, stripped back to its basic architectural elements. One wall is of textured cement, and the vaulted ceiling reveals exposed beams.

Dominating the room is a tall black plinth holding up a large, exotic floral display. Toward the rear is an open kitchen. The color scheme is black and gray, punctuated with bits of red. The light fixtures, hanging down from ceiling, are twisted electrical conduit ending in small outdoor spotlights. At either end of the room are neon elements adding to the contemporary vibe.

Seated at a faux marble table, we were impressed by the dramatic black-and-white plates accented with brilliant crimson rose petals. Perusing the menu is an adventure in itself, requiring some serious focus and imagination. For instance, what could Asian white chocolate mole sauce be, and what might it taste like on a steak topped with Stilton cheese?

The appetizer menu for the day includes Chinese, Japanese and Italian offerings or combinations thereof as well as items that can be defined as California cuisine. Mama Kang’s pot stickers and the mussels and clams cooked in a spicy Chinese black bean sauce are classic Chinese.

In the Japanese style, there are oysters with sake-cured salmon caviar with ginger mignonette. For Italian, there is an heirloom tomato salad with fresh mozzarella and balsamic dressing.

Combinations include the Chinese spicy Caesar salad with smoked chicken breast and Kung Pao calamari.

California cuisine is a kind of fusion in and of itself. Appearing on this menu is a warm organic salad of roasted squab, arugula, frisee, yam and tangerine chili vinaigrette as well as the hoisin barbecue, boneless beef short ribs with Asian green papaya slaw.

We chose the crispy shrimp tortilla with “trio paints” and chicken spring rolls with sweet-and-sour sauce. The shrimp- and cheese-filled fried tortilla was a taquito, and the paints turned out to be three different aioli sauces: cilantro, roasted red bell pepper and black bean.

The taquito, though a bit greasy, was quite good with the black bean sauce. The other two sauces were pretty on the plate but added little flavor. All three had an oily aftertaste. On the other side of the plate was the spring roll in a puddle of sweet-and-sour sauce. The first bite was so assertive with strong pickled ginger flavor that nothing else could be tasted. The spring roll was more than a bit greasy, and the filling contents were so finely chopped as to be indistinguishable.

Even more than the starters, the entrées reflect the mad scientist in Michael Kang; wildly creative but sometimes over the top. Fusion is sometimes more like fission in that the elements on the plate, although delicious by themselves, don’t always work together. Rather than complementing each other, the flavors compete, as there are too many different tastes on one plate.

Our first choice of entrées was “MK’s Favorite,” the intriguing fresh New Zealand Alfonsino snapper and Dungeness crab cake pan-seared in spicy rock shrimp rum mint sauce, accompanied by artichoke gnocchi, tossed with organic sun chokes, mushroom asparagus and moon dried tomatoes. The title alone is a mouthful!

On the fish side of the plate was a pool of creamy sauce topped by a perfectly cooked piece of snapper with a crispy exterior and a moist interior, excellent on its own. Leaning against it was a crab cake, very flavorful but with a mushy texture and without the expected crust. On top of that was scattered an abundance of rock shrimp.

Something in this grouping was seriously over-salted, and the delicate flavors of the sauce were lost. On the other side of the plate was an entirely different composition of flavors. The excellent gnocchi were in a savory mélange of dried tomatoes, mushrooms and asparagus, but there was no relationship between the yin and the yang of this plate.

In our opinion, many of these high-concept dishes are over-conceived, resulting in too much of a good thing.20060127imh5ntnc(LA)20060127imh5ognc(LA)