1618 Asian Fusion

1618 Asian Fusion is a family-run pan-Asian restaurant on East Riverside Drive in Austin, in the ground floor of the AMLI South Shore building. Its name repeats the street number of the address and also points to the golden ratio, whose digits the owners tie to fresh starts and to harmony.

Kevin Le and Lynn Tran, a married couple, run the restaurant, and Lynn Tran also leads the kitchen. Their first restaurant in the city was 888 Pan Asian, which later passed to new management. They opened 1618 in October 2019 and marked the grand opening a few months later with Thai temple dancers, a lion dance team and ribbon dancing by a local Chinese dance school. In 2024 the couple announced a smaller second restaurant, Sixteen 88, on East Sixth Street.

Recipes come from Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese and Singaporean cooking, gathered on the owners' travels in Asia rather than mixed into new hybrids. Pho and pad Thai share the menu with Saigon grilled lamb chops and with lobster in Singaporean chili sauce. Salmon is steamed in a banana leaf with chili. Grilled lemongrass duck skewers and the house egg roll were the bites carried around the room on the night of the grand opening, and the kitchen also cooks fried rice and sesame chicken for children.

A fireplace and a small gift shop stand by the entrance, and a patio opened in the weeks after the first service. The bar makes cocktails such as the Secretini, mixed from vodka, lychee and cucumber juice, and serves egg yolk coffee to guests who skip alcohol. Yelp chose the restaurant for a grant from its Employee Appreciation Day fund, picked by its ratings and by reviews that named the staff. Kevin Le let the employees vote on how the money would be spent.