Before fusion cuisine became a trend in the restaurant industry, John Russo II of Russo’s Restaurant in Marble Falls was combining the foods and flavors of his Lithuanian-Italian heritage with the regional tastes of wherever he was living. That started on the East Coast, where he grew up in New Jersey.  

“I come from a huge family that liked to eat, and where we came from, everything you wanted to eat was available,” he said. He learned about great seafood and vegetables living in the Garden State along the Eastern seaboard. His family instilled in him the culinary rules he now lives by.