Breaking down perceived conceptions about dining, Master is a Chinese restaurant. Watch the video on their website, breaking down the walls and they are breaking dining ideals in the restaurant. It is a clean grungy space with magnificent food and wine, hip urban beats jam the airwaves, spice and flavour run rampant. The menu is made from many small share dishes. Many restaurant do this now, just like the original neighbourhood Chinese restaurant. The menu at Master has traditional elements but is serving modern Chinese food.

Beef Tendons

Puffed Beef Tendon with Haidai Salt is a light crispy number. A fun play on the most old school Chinese restaurant snack, the prawn cracker. Chicken skewers loaded with flavour and covered in nuts is a simple and delicious starter. Scallops silks confused us to what they actually are, perhaps noodles made from scallop somehow, with XO, light and refreshing, a perfect vehicle to get saliva moving.

Scallop silks

When you see Noma, Quay and Momofuku Seiobo on a resume of chef John Javier expectations run ripe. I did not know any of this of course, I’d seen photos of the food from Master on social media and managed to score a table before the word gets out in a big way.  I anticipate it will be much harder to get a table soon. I love Instagram for finding hot new restaurants, just follow the right people.

Eggplants that is fried crisp, sweet and salty, this is not a brand new sensation, it is just delicious.

Eggplant

Spicy crumbed sweetbreads pack some heat. Deep fry is a great way to cook these little nuggets, they arrive on a plate loaded with chilli. Luckily, we were warned about the license restriction after 10pm and quickly ordered more wine,

Sweetbreads

I wonder if legislation will extend to amount of chilli served on a plate soon! If Sydney wants to truly be a considered an international city this legislation must stop and restaurants need to be prepared to stay open later. Too many times I’ve been turned away from a restaurant after 10 pm leaving me only with fast food options.

Buttery cabbage

The buttery burnt cabbage is gloriously rich. It is charred black on the outside with fish butter, the soft juicy cabbage takes some slurping when eaten. We then had smoked pork jowl with Peking pancakes. All tradition is abandoned as the pancake is large, texture as if the love child of naan and roti. The jowl with a section of fat that keeps the meat gloriously juicy, delicious smoky strips of pork and it is fun eating with your hands.

Pancakes

And you’ll need those hands if you tackle the crab. It was spanner crab on our visit, I have also seen images of mud crab from Master’s Instagram account. So much moist sweet crab flesh dripping in sauce which we devoured in an instant. What Chinese feast would be complete without a festival of crustacean and this was the Burning Man of a Chinese meal.

Spanner Crab

The deserts are divine. The potato flour dust on the deep fried ice cream is light and sweet, the shell to the ice cream firm and crisp. Immaculate. This is the best version of this dish I have ever tasted. Deep fried ice cream is the most famous Chinese desert in Australia and done here nothing like my childhood memories. Congee, pear and coriander is the other dessert, the bright green is spectacular. My body tries to deny me carbs this late at night but the fresh flavours here won the fight. I could eat this for breakfast any day.

Congee

There is still so much left on the menu for me to try and I will be back, I’d just better be quick, before word gets out and I can’t get in.

Deep Fried Ice Cream