The Baker & The Bottleman Hong Kong

The best thing at @marrow_restaurant — a pop-up restaurant within a wine bar above a storied bakehouse in Wanchai that vends artisanal cookies the size of hotcakes — is that it knows exactly what it wants to be: a modern take on the classic grill buoyed by live fire and the kind of odd cuts that you’ll find at a Barcelonian asador fluent in both meats and seafood; or, say, St. John by way of a Wan Chai wet market.

You could build a very good meal around one of the six tentpole dishes from the grill. On the night I went, in early July, these included rosy, judiciously cooked lamb loin with a well-rendered fat cap, and a glorious 13 oz Australian Wagyu chuck eye — serving two for a reasonable $688 HKD — with an au poivre-style sauce with one toe in a good Parisian brasserie and another in a dai pai dong that brings you joy at 2 am. A terrific dish.

For a fuller embrace of chef @chrismsc ‘s style, consider the grilled whole turbot — a local catch glossed with a potent sauce of deep, nutty brown butter and salted lemon. Or that night’s special, local squid caught that morning, glazed with a dark, molasses-like emulsion that combines red curry, dried shrimp and its own stock.

But my dish of the night was a little more unadorned: yellow croaker, a staple in these wet markets, fried until the skin looks brittle and only gently punished while the flesh stayed silky and true. Don’t miss Ma’s take on a beef tartare, resonant with smoked Sichuan oil and a confit egg. Thank you @theforksandspoons852 for the meal and hospitality. Less