Charcoal & Crisp Lechon in Crows Nest specialises in the Manila style of lechon: the meat is marinated in a simple salt, pepper and spice mix, and served with a vinegar-rich dipping.
Filipino$
If you did a Family Feud-style quiz with a thousand Australians to collect the most common answers to the question “what’s your favourite thing about Christmas”, pork crackling would surely crack the top five. Leftover ham, too, no doubt, and “downing half a bottle of Black Chook Sparkling Shiraz before midday”.
But as much as Australia loves the crunch of salty, blistered pork, there isn’t a country quite as mad for the upper mantle of a pig than the Philippines. “Australian, Japanese and Chinese people are very particular about the flavour and texture of the actual meat,” says Charcoal & Crisp Lechon owner AJ Eserjose. “Whereas Filipinos place more importance on the skin.” He founded the clean, bright, modestly decorated Crows Nest restaurant in July with his wife, Catherine Paa. The couple also run Lechon Republic in Singapore, where they’re still based, but an Australian move is on the cards.
If you’re Filipino, please feel free to skip to the next paragraph. This will be like explaining the concept of steak to a Texan, or KFC’s Ultimate Box to someone from Newcastle. Lechon, broadly, is a whole pig roasted over coals on a spit and served at weddings, parties – indeed, whenever there’s cause for any celebration. Skin with an orange-brown shine like peanut brittle is paramount. Charcoal & Crisp specialises in the Manila style of lechon: the meat is marinated in a simple salt, pepper and spice mix, and served with a vinegar-rich dipping sauce built on ground pork liver.
Eserjose uses rolled belly for his lechon and the results are delicious, particularly that all-important skin: shatteringly crisp on one side, melting and tender on the other. You can have it chopped with steamed rice (or chips) and salad for $22.50, but the smart money is on the $39 serve that can be shared between two with leftovers. (There’s also a popular “feast” platter heaving with lechon, lime-marinated pomfret fish and grilled eggplant tossed with red onion, tomato and assertive shrimp paste.) Lumpiang Shanghai – crunchy, thumb-sized spring rolls filled with soy sauce-seasoned pork mince and carrot – are another Filipino party-starter, and I’d like to eat these under a tree in spring, thank you very much, or by the half-dozen on the couch while bingeing Columbo.
Another must-order – unless you’re on a low-sodium diet – is the sisig: a sizzling, cast-iron plate of chopped lechon, green chilli and onion accompanied by a raw egg, everything sharpened by calamansi, the Philippines’ favourite, lime-adjacent citrus. Order a housemade lemonade on the side to whipsaw between salty and sweet.
Also, watermelon – get this – in a soup! It’s added to a bowl of tamarind-flavoured sinigang, which is its own teeming ecosystem of tomato, eggplant, okra and water spinach. You can have it with more lechon bobbing about or a generous amount of shell-on prawns. At the risk of having too much of a good thing, I reckon go the prawns. Their direct flavour works better against the soup’s refreshing fruit and sour notes, too.
It’s a short menu with a few rotating specials, such as pancit canton, a highly savoury tangle of stir-fried egg noodles and tiny shrimp. But, at the end of day, it’s all about that tawny lechon. If you’re into early 19th-century English essayists, you may be reminded of Charles Lamb’s fawning over crackled pork skin in his book, A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig: “Oh, call it not fat – but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it – the tender blossoming of fat – fat cropped in the bud – taken in the shoot – in the first innocence.” Keep that one up your sleeve for the Christmas Day table.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Casual Filipino diner for adventures in roast pork
Go-to dishes: Lechon for two ($39); watermelon sinigang with prawns ($22.50); lechon sisig ($19.50); lumpiang Shanghai spring rolls ($15.50 for six)
Drinks: House-made lemonade, watermelon juice, Stone & Wood beer and BYO wine Tuesday to Thursday ($10 corkage per bottle)
Cost: About $70 for two, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
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