Restaurant Mason

The main dish in the terrific two course dinner was this cube of Coquon Farm suckling pig, served with kimchi stuffed with king crab meat, apple and fennel with a trio of (oddly overgrown) baby carrots on the side.

While I personally thought that the suckling pig could’ve been more juicy, the flavors were on point. It was meaty, salty and superbly satisfying. The skin was crackling, crunchy and was a nice contrast to the tender pork. The sumptuous brown sauce/reduction on the side added even more flavor and richness to the already scrumptious square of swine.

The kimchi was startlingly spicy, and was quite the rude awakening from the mellow, easygoing flavors of the pork belly. The king crab meat wrapped within the spicy pickled cabbage was sweet and succulent, while the apple embedded inside brought the crunch time, big time.

Needless to say, I sucked that plate clean of any trace of suckling pig.

Restaurant Mason is a true blue, old school fine dining restaurant in terms of service, but the food is distinctly nouvelle cuisine. This is the appetizer in the two course meal (A$72), and it’s built from seared scallop, red cabbage, turnip, radish and guanciale in Restaurant Mason’s proprietary Master Stock.

The shellfish quartet was sublimely seared, and each swole scallop was fabulously fresh, and stunningly sweet to boot. The Master Stock is surprisingly sour, which serves as a natural foil to the sweet scallops. The thin slices of turnip and radish add a little crunchiness into the otherwise soft affair, and every element in this dish is played against each other to perfection.

Fine dining may cause your wallet to take a SHELLacking, but damn if it isn’t worth it.