Datsun

Two orders carry Datsun. A lacquered pork belly bao with cucumber and broad bean sauce, and a bowl of dandan noodles built on pork mince, scallion and red chili. Everything else the Elgin Street kitchen does sits in relation to those two. Pan-Asian is the umbrella, but the menu has narrowed what that means down to a compact run of bao, noodles and dumplings that a table can actually order through in one sitting. Datsun opened in 2015 in a corridor better known for its bars than its kitchens, and the discipline of the menu — the refusal to stretch in every Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Southeast Asian direction at once — is the first thing it asks the diner to notice.

The bao side of the menu does the most representative work. The lacquered pork belly arrives in the bun with cucumber and broad bean sauce; the Crispy Chicken Bao reaches in a different direction with furikake and ranch dressing, a deliberate counterweight so a second bao does not repeat the first. Tofu is treated as a bao in its own right — organic and crisped, not parked on a vegetarian afterthought. The noodle dishes do similar work in their category. Dandan Noodles land with pork mince, scallion and red chili; the Charred Eggplant Dandan stays in the same noodle conversation with smoky chili and cumin, giving a plant-forward table the same heat and depth as the meat-led path. Dumplings round out the rest — Pork and Coriander Lace Dumplings, and Kabocha Squash Dumplings with coconut, dill and lime leaf sauce.