After blushing East met boisterous West, both partners clung to their families and traditions, compromising only as they had to. Now, a decade or so after the consummation, the experimentation has settled to a simmer. Nowhere is the union in better shape than here in San Francisco, at whose kitchen windows the first serenades were sung. Smart, well-matched combinations and striking separates have become the order of the day. If their parents were obliged to tailor their ways to American tastes, the younger generation can revel in the purity of homeland traditions.
Small food looms big on the restaurant scene, and tsumami, the tapas of Japan, is the current rage.
Each dish is a fugue of flavors on a Pan-Asian theme. For grazing, it sure beats beer and nuts. Those who venture beyond the corner Szechuan into the big, brightly lit world of new Hong Kong-style restaurants often encounter what seems like an invisible bamboo curtain. Large Chinese families happily devour tea-smoked squab and flowering chives while the rest of us, intimidated by the waiters' lack of English and a menu the size of a telephone book, hastily order up the familiar lo mein. You won't impress a date with suave manners, but you'll end up with a good meal.