Fusion is spelled OM

OM strolled onto the scene like a pretty girl wearing a flowered and flounced spring dress, walking into a crowd of guys in business suits. There’s a current mood of practicality in restaurants, manifested in modern comfort food, downscaled menus, neighborhood concepts, mini burgers, and lots of mac and cheese variations. But OM’s food is playful, fusion teased to a youthful froth. Looking around OM’s dining room reveals waitresses carefully balancing tall, thin glasses of fuschia-colored liquid. It’s hibiscus spritzer, and it’s only one element of a complicated riff on a popular appetizer: tuna tartar torched to be slightly smoky, with hot bursts from a spicy vinaigrette, crunch from pine nuts, sweetness from currants, and a cool contrast from cubes of ginger gelee in a tiny spoon.

Order a Caesar salad — now on the menu of every restaurant — and you get a soliloquy on Caesars. Down one side of the plate runs a long, thin heart of romaine lettuce alongside artfully arranged white anchovies, a soft-poached egg in its half-shell, asparagus, and tiny fingerling potatoes, and a golden rivulet of garlicky, Parmesan-infused dressing holding it altogether. Sometimes, even in the first courses, you can get lost in the concepts. Tomato and grilled cheese sounds straightforward, but isn’t. A clear, thin consomme of tomato-flavored liquid flavored with mint stands in for the soup. It’s a little underwhelming, this soup, and the tapioca pearls at the bottom of the bowl don’t add much taste. But who cares when the smoked cheese, all melty and gooey between slices of toasted brioche, is so good.

Everything about OM has a frisson of the exotic. Owned by Bik Yonjan, a native of Nepal, and Solmon Chowdhury, originally from Bangladesh, there’s an international vibe to the place. A carved door at the entrance opens to a water wall of colored light and a wildly popular bar. Upstairs, the L-shaped dining room, designed by architect Sandra Fairbank, is filled with carvings and artwork by Yonjan’s father. Vibrantly colored fabrics cover the banquettes, and a serene statue of Buddha gazes at diners. Many of the diners tend to match: young and beautiful, with an eclectic and decidedly hip look.

Rachel Klein, the young chef, matches that fusion with her food. Klein, who has cooked in New York and first ran her own kitchen at Lot 401 in Providence, could never be faulted for being timid. Her surf ’n’ turf, for example, riffs on the classic, with very rare sliced tuna simply sprinkled with coarse salt matched to momos filled with beef short-rib. The Tibetan dumplings offer a rich, satisfying contrast to rutabagas glazed with brown sugar, accompanied by a little fluff of greens and sauteed radishes.

Steak and eggs gave Klein notoriety in Providence, and it’s still enticing here. The best thing about the dish isn’t really the oddity of the poached and then breadcrumbed and fried egg, but the balance between rich, red, and tender grilled filet mignon and the runny yellow interior of the egg. Her duet of pork features a big square of braised pork belly — silky fat with streaks of lean — that contrasts with the firm texture of grilled loin. Slightly puckery apple moustarda on the loin and sweet and sour red cabbage under the pork belly lighten the richness, and a pool of Chinese mustard gives the palate a little zap of heat.

Not all of Klein’s dishes are as challenging. A Thai bouillabaisse is full of good sea creatures and vegetables along with green curry, and it’s wonderful and soothing. On a plate featuring a finely handled cut of black pearl salmon, a very smoky-tasting potato puree is the most memorable flavor. Sometimes, the flavor balance tips; panroasted duck breast with Medjool dates leans a little too much to the sweet, especially the shredded duck confit in a flaky crust, but slightly bitter greens with the duck cut through any cloyness.

OM keeps playing right through to the desserts. One called ‘‘tea time,’’ with different elaborations on tea-laced ice cream and sauces, features a lovely spice cake. Both a carrot ice cream with candied carrot chunks — and another in a burnt sugar flavor — lilt on the tongue, but an olive oil cake with dried pineapple can’t quite rise above the curiosity level. Instead, an unusual take on an ice cream sandwich cake — carrot cake layered with parsnip ice cream — is both unusual and delicious, and the pool of haberno-blessed caramel sauce that accompanies the cake is addictive.

As fun as Klein’s food is to eat, and as pleasant as OM is to be in, there’s still a disconnect between the concept and reality. The place has been mobbed, Klein says in a phone interview, and that shows in long waits for plates to be delivered and interminable pauses between courses. Only on the first visit, when the room was fairly quiet, did the food come out hot. And though the wait staff is pleasant and polite, they all tend to look like they’re in shock.

‘‘I like to have fun,’’ Klein says over the phone. She’s talking about her food, but we can only hope the chef and her staff will be able to settle in and smooth it all out so that she — and the rest of us — can have more fun at OM.