Urban Fusion: Onyx Fusion Bar and Restaurant

Reusing and repurposing older buildings is one of those trends that makes good sense these days. Open Square in Holyoke is turning an older mill into a multipurposed set of offices, condos, eateries and artists’ spaces. The old jail in Northampton is now residential condos. And the former Basketball Hall of Fame building along Springfield’s riverfront is home to LA Fitness and the high-end restaurant, ONYX FUSION BAR & RESTAURANT.

ONYX, located at 1150 W. Columbus Ave. (730-6699, www.onyxfusion.com), is the brainchild of businessmen Peter Pappas and Michael Spagnoli. They had a lot of space to work with and they used it well, creating a three-tiered restaurant, bar and tables on the first floor, tables on the second with the open kitchen, and a third-floor function space. Over 80 percent of the construction demolition was recycled and Pappas and Spagnoli have done a lot to limit water consumption, including building a water retention pond on the roof of the structure.

The Onyx partners come from restaurant backgrounds. Pappas’ father and uncle used to run the Red Barn, a well-known night club in Chicopee from the 1950s through the ’70s. Spagnoli’s family ran The Hollywood Café in Springfield’s South End from 1938 until 1987, when the building was taken by the city.

Pappas honed his business skills in a series of multinational businesses. Currently, he owns and runs Alliance Group, an industrial import and export company with ties to Australia and the Pacific Rim. Spagnoli, a chiropractor, owns Trillium Sports Medicine.

On a recent night at Onyx, a series of Hawaiian scenes swooped across the wall of video screens behind the bar, while on another night, a series of psychedelic patterns swirled, fortunately without sound. The restaurant, shiny and glittery in black and tones of bronze and gold, has a very urban feel to it.

Along with redevelopment, Asian fusion is another laudable trend.

Executive Chef Isaac Bancaco was born in Maui and graduated from Portland, Oregon’s Western Culinary Institute, mixing Hawaiian style with traditional French techniques. He has cooked at Blue Ginger with Ming Tsai and L.A.’s James Beard-award-winning chef Roy Yamaguchi. He brought with him sous chef Lingo John Quichocho, who is from Guam.

Their cuisine combines Japanese with Hawaiian and mainland cooking.

Like the sushi. On one night, I opted for the Poke, pronounced pokeh, ($12.95) which is a combination of diced ahi tuna mixed with sesame oil and some hot pepper. It was served on a seaweed and bean sprout salad that was both plentiful and good. On another visit, we tried the seared tuna with grapefruit, four slices of pepper-crusted tuna that was closer to medium rare, but well sauced.

There are other appetizers. The fried calamri ($10.95) was crisp and greaseless, flecked with scallion greens. It paired well with the Poke. My online research had turned up several negative comments about the crab cakes ($12.95) so I ordered them, of course. The crab was shredded and mixed with the filling, but the cakes were well cooked and sat on a drizzle of spicy hot oil partnered with a mayonnaise sauce. The hot oil brings a nice heat to the crispy cakes, and while they’re not the chunks of crabmeat seasoned with Old Bay that you expect in Maryland, they are better than the reviews suggested.

My wife looked longingly at the Onyx Wedge salad ($7.95), a wedge of iceburg lettuce, a “bacon roseate,” blue cheese and candied pecans , but opted for the Ahi Caesar Salad ($11.95), which was a good Caeser with four slices of ahi, nicely seared this time. On my second visit, I tried the wedge salad and it was good. The blue cheese was smooth and creamy and a far cry from the biting commercial grade you often see.

We were not offered bread and given the amount of fish protein we ingested on both visits, began joking about a “carb-free zone.” When I asked the waiter at the end of one dinner, he said Onyx had great bread, “We make it here. All you need to do is ask.” Given the portions, which are typically quite ample, you may not need it, but keep the thought in mind in case you miss it.

For dinner one night, my wife chose the Kiawe planked salmon ($25) which arrived on a small alder plank with white rice topped with sesame seeds and some baby bok choy seasoned nicely with ginger. The salmon, sprinkled with Hawaiian salt, tasted salty, but was well cooked and fresh. I had a veal porter house ($29), a large T-boned chop with good seasoning and a taste of the grill. It was rare rather than the medium rare I specified and sat on a dressed-greens and halved-cherry-tomato salad that was slightly and agreeably wilted from the heat of the chop. Unnecessary blue cheese accompanied the dish.

One of the seafood dishes is “Just off the Jet” Fresh Hawaiian Fish ($35). On both nights, our servers described it as being speared the night before and jetted to Hartford in the morning. The fish, kajiki, which seems to be in season, is a type of marlin that is very similar to swordfish. The carbon footprint of the dish is pretty large and it would have worked equally well with swordfish or perhaps even striped bass. The sauce was outstanding. A coconut milk and sesame oil with some hot pepper heat sat on a shrimp, sweet potato, red bell pepper and red onion “hash” that was loose enough to mix into the sauce. Some enoki mushrooms were scattered through the dish.

My companion had the short ribs osso bucco style ($27), the only fusion being the mixture of shiitaki, button and enoki mushrooms on the veal demi-glace. It was a little dry, and makes me think that the best dishes at Onyx are the fish or the Hawaiian style dishes. There is a teriyaki beef that I’d like to try, since my guess is the sauce won’t come out of a bottle.

For desserts, which hover around $7, there is bread pudding, apple crisp and a crème brulee with some almond extract in the custard. The coffee is Kona, although not especially strong.

My question about Springfield’s whole riverfront redevelopment plan is what to do after dinner. You can move to Onyx’s bar to continue drinking and talking. On Tuesday and Friday nights there is often live music and dancing. I don’t know how practical it is to eat before the symphony, a play, or a movie, unless you want to start eating at 5 or hurry through a good meal. To me it’s the kind of place that works as a good start to an evening if you are bound for a party or a get-together with friends, or simply headed home to wait for Saturday Night Live’s latest take on the election.

Originally published, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Friday, October 17, 2008