Sang Froid

Handmade and hand-crafted, Sáng by Mabasa expands the definition of Korean dining in Sydney

- Pat Nourse

I don’t steal from restaurants, but if I did, there’d be a few things from Sáng on my shopping list. The heavy piece of engraved brass weighing down the bill. The beautiful shallow spoons set on the table with chopsticks made from the same wood. The fine golden coat-hooks placed high on the wall would almost certainly be a two-man job (I’ll create the distraction, you pull down your coat with a very sharp tug) but would be entirely worth the trouble. As a rule-abiding citizen, though, I’ll leave these blooms unplucked. They’re good reason, if nothing else, to come back.

Not that good reasons to visit Sáng are in short supply. The sequel to Mabasa, the restaurant that was run by same team in Balmain, Sáng presents Korean food on fine wares in a sleek setting. Its flavours are comforting, but the plating is precise. Aesthetics count here, but nothing is so modernised that it loses what Koreans call son mat. It’s translated as “taste of hand”, but it’s really about heart as much as anything else. You’ll see it at Sáng in the way eggplants are cut into wedges of just the right size to fry, so they cook right through but the batter stays perfectly blond and crisp, a ripe vehicle for a sticky sweet-sour spring onion and garlic sauce. It’s there in the perfect layer of crunchy rice at the bottom of a stone-pot bibimbap. In the slippery give of the tofu in a kimchi jjigae. In the salty-sweet crisps of almond and seaweed gimbugak served as a snack with drinks.