Restaurant no name

Behind a bamboo fence in a glory of sparkly lights is a restaurant without a sign. It serves one thing, sin daad (meat barbecue). Holes have been hewn out of melamine-topped tables, as if in a crazed moment the owner thought ‘must-have-meat-barbecue-restaurant, and now’. In each busted hole, a brazier of hot coals is placed, then a metal perforated dish - a car hub-cap thing - is sat on top. Alongside this is placed a small steel bucket of steaming stock, a basket bundled with plant stuff - swamp spinach (morning glory), oyster and wood-ear mushrooms - and eggs. Plus a dish of lime wedges, chopped garlic, a hot chilli paste and a platter of carpaccio-thin buffalo meat and some pork fat. So much raw ingredient, it’s as if a slice of the morning market has arrived. A nugget of fat is placed in the middle of the metal grill to slow-render and baste the cooking plate. Fat deltas and trickles, further flavouring the broth that’s ladled in at the edge - where veg and cracked eggs are popped in to poach. We stick on the buffalo and splash on fish sauce and the meat’s fringes hiss. Through wafts of intense steam and smoke, pump the sounds of Blue’s ‘All Rise’ on a loop. We scoop soup and soft-yolk eggs into our bowls, stick on the grilled meat, with squeezes of this and sploshes of that. Our hub-cap hob makes a groovy night out.