Fusion restaurants can be hit or miss, especially when the flavors of the fusion are quite different - in this case, Japanese and Italian. But I'd seen and read a lot of good things about Carino and wanted to try it out.
One can't go wrong with calamari or fried cheese (mozzarella agedashi), so we got those as starters (those are a must try!) Two of us went with the pork with saffron risotto for our mains, while the other two got the soft shell crab risotto.
My main originally listed asparagus but it came out with a boy choy for a substitute, which I think worked better with the pork. But I think rendered fat from the pork overwhelmed the risotto and you couldn't really taste the saffron which was a shame.
The soft shell crab risotto wasn't really well received, having a whole fried crab on your plate isn't visually appealing.
Carino has the right idea for the fusion, I'm thinking the execution on other dishes may be better so I'd like to try them again before I make my decision on how I really feel about the food here.