Curacao Fusions

Despite the surprisingly good food at our otherwise not so wonderful resort, the remainder of our dining excursions did not manage to satisfy low expectations. It's easy to forget how good I have it in New York. Easy to forget even though I love to lord over out-of-towners how much better my food options are than theirs.

One of our dive guides, Juice (his name is Hugo, or jugo in Spanish, hence the nickname) in a fit of benevolence with which I am largely personally unfamiliar, took us to Long Beach for a shore dive on his day off work so that we might see the seahorses we missed by not joining the previous day's boat dives.

For lunch we followed him to this restaurant Fusions he enjoyed. It started off with these shrimp spring rolls he loved, and deservedly so. Marinated in an herb mixture before being rolled in the wrapper and fried, I would have been happy to nosh on a plate of these delicious offerings from the sea even if I was not in the small isolated island of Curacao but was instead dining in the small teeming island of Manhattan.

Food offerings thereafter were marginally adequate but a sharp reminder as to why I always insist on reserving lodgings that offer some sort of cooking facility. After having some amazing conch ceviche when diving in Ambergris Caye, Belize the prior year, I jumped upon the opportunity to order it at Fusions. Awful: rubbery, bland, a monotone rendition of what could have been wonderful, and they should have let the poor mollusk roam another day on the sandy shores of the Caribbean.

Wings were equally unimpressive. Not bad in any sort of distinguished fashion, just your normal disappointing plate of an obligatory item on a menu serving casual American fare.

Predictably, I ordered the calamari as well, and it was decent. The batter was light, the squid rings tender and appropriately accompanied by a mayonnaise-based dipping sauce. The only thing I can't understand is the garnish of raw onion rings. Those poor things cried for a quick swim in a well-seasoned beer batter before a baptism by fire in a vat in hot oil.

Juice went with a pesto pasta, which was hearty but demonstrated a lack of familiarity with the world of al dente pasta, and inside my heart grieved silently for our otherwise quite worldly guide.

I split a plate of Malaysian noodles with K. Let me stop here and clarify that after diving, you become a crazy hungry ravenous beast that can consume obscene quantities of food. I don't know why because goodness knows I try my best to exert myself as little as possible when diving, but it's an accepted consequence of diving, and if you're going to think I'm a gluttonous shoveler of calories, don't base it on this experience.

W played it safe with a dish of beef fajitas. He's mild mannered, but if you watch closely and are patient, it's amazing how much he can pack away. It's not just the loud ones with the big mouths who can eat the most.