They are all lying to you. Shanghai's Thai restaurants, Shanghai's Vietnamese restaurants, Shanghai's Singaporean restaurants, Shanghai's Indonesian restaurants. They send a disappointing and deceitful message: Authenticity Not Available Here.

But! Food Fusion.

Food Fusion is it, The One. They are telling the truth, one Malaysian dish at a time. Their kitchen is a radiant, glowing light of truth and purity and belacan right now. I've been slowly chomping my way through the menu over the last month. Last night, with the help of some gluttonous friends, I plowed through 12 dishes and a few beers -- we ate for eight. The bill was 646rmb. The truth isn't just out there. It's exceedingly affordable.

One of said gluttons is a Malaysian chef. Food Fusion got his stamp of authenticity, though we didn't need him to tell us that everything -- everything -- was delicious. If it needed to be complex -- beef rendang, redolent of kaffir lime leaf, coconut, and wintry spices -- it was complex. If it needed to be simple -- yong taufu, a mixed bowl of green peppers, smoked tofu, and bitter melon, all stuffed with a finely-textured fish paste and all floating in a mild broth -- it was simple. There are curry leaves and belacan and off-cuts of pork in soups where off-cuts belong. The flavors are bold. They don't lie about the spice. They signal hope for transporting the notoriously fragile cuisines of Southeast Asia to sweet-tooth Shanghai.

It's a remarkable turnaround for the space. It used to be Crossroads, a Singaporean joint who seemed to regard quality like normal people regard the weather -- a naturally fluctuating cycle completely beyond man's control. Food Fusion moved in after their original location, near Xintiandi, was slated for demolition. They dimmed the lights, added some fake foliage and wood floors, and installed a rocky water feature. It's much more handsome than its top-of-the-mall location probably needs, but you're not coming for the decor. You're coming for the food.

Let me offer a few suggestions.

Rojak, which looks like a car crash involving a fruit-and-vegetable delivery vehicle and the hongshao rou sauce tanker truck. You've got apples, cucumbers, bean sprouts, pineapple, tofu, and some peanuts happening there, with a funky, sweet dressing of fermented prawn sauce, brown sugar, and tamarind. Fresh, crunchy, fruity, shrimpy. It's Penang's salad.



Grilled beef satay, sweet, smoky, and traveling with an excellent peanut sauce:



Sambal kangkong, a bright stir-fry of morning glory, plenty of garlic, red chili, and more shrimp paste. They don't pull punches on the chilies of this one, and they cook it with precision -- the hollow stalks of the morning glory are still crunchy.



Roti prata with curry chicken:



This one's a bit dubious. It's a black-pepper crab. Food Fusion gets the sauce very close, but a Chinese crab in a Singaporean sauce is still a Chinese crab -- mushy and wanting for sweet ocean flavor. It's still pretty good.



Black carrot cake. "Carrot cake" is misleading. It's made with a radish cake, which isn't a cake, but a slab of grated radish steamed with rice flour, cooled, and then cubed. You see it on Cantonese menus alot, stir-fried with X.O. sauce. Done that way, it's a dim sum staple. Done this way -- "black", as in cooked with sweet soy sauce, as opposed to the "white" one, which leaves out the soy sauce -- it's a Singaporean classic. Big thumbs up on this one from the Malaysian chef for the inclusion of crunchy bits of preserved vegetables. This dish sent him straight to stories of his childhood breakfasts and his mom. It's the aforementioned radish cake, pan-fried with egg -- to me, it's the Asian cousin of American home fries, with the egg already in there.



And then the soups.

In the clay pot, you've got bak kut teh, a pork soup with strong Chinese roots. It's an extremely comforting dish, regardless of your background, whose Chinese name translates as pork bone tea, and it might as well be a tonic. Bak kut teh is a bellwether of any Malaysian kitchen. There are a lot of possible shortcuts to take with it. Here's some Wikipedia history. But here's why Food Fusion's is good: it's a mellow, faintly sweet pork soup with a flavorful stock and surprising little bits of soft liver and chewy stomach along with the meatier pork ribs. It's how Malaysia wants this dish done. That's a saucer of sweet soy sauce, chopped garlic, and red chilies on the side.

In the white pot, curry laksa. Wikipedia can explain this one to you, too. Food Fusion's transports me directly to a plastic stool in a small market in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, waiting for the laksa lady to ladle the coconut-milk curry out of her bubbling cauldron and over my fish cake, fried tofu, bean sprouts, and thick noodles. Food Fusion doesn't have her low, rickety stools or her sass, but, more or less, they've got her fiery orange laksa.

And that lady is the truth.

Food Fusion is on the eighth floor of Parkson's, at 918 Huaihai Zhong Lu. More details and a map right here.

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