A lot of dishes land on a lot of tables every day, provoking thoughts like "yum" and "oh, dear" and "I wish I didn't have to share". It's a rare dish that elicits a "wow, I have never seen that before". That's what happened when Lucy Liu's blackened pork hock arrived. In my mind, the surging sizzle of the open kitchen ebbed to spacious silence. The chatter of adjoining tables became soundless gesticulation. The metallic halos of faces over phones turned to an air-brushed blur. And sharp and shouty among all this was a pig's foot. Chef Michael Lambie deserves applause for that: it's hard to come up with show-stoppers.

The hock says a lot about Lucy Liu's genre-hopping verve. It's marinated in Korean chilli paste, braised in Chinese masterstock then deep-fried to a caramelised crunch. The pig is served like Peking duck with pancakes, kimchi-spiced slaw and chilli-jazzed hoi sin sauce. To eat, stab the meat, and wrap shredded flesh and fatty crunch in a pancake then race gravity to get it gob-ward. The pork follows a parade of smaller dishes: maybe supple-skinned dumplings of barramundi and scampi, a snazzy version of kingfish carpaccio with coconut foam and green chilli, or crazy-good fried-egg pancake rolled with soft-shelled crab and a chilli-mayo dressing I didn't mind chasing down my forearm.

Lucy Liu has reimagined the old PM24. The entrance is now at the cobblestoned rear, adding laneway cachet. It's a bit of a scene but, refreshingly, you can book to be part of it. This is the era of street food in smart new buildings; this simulacrum includes kitschy-cute 3D menus, stylish ply, lazy Susans at larger tables, spice-friendly wine and helpful staff. A Beijing hutong, it ain't. Using an Asian woman's name as a moniker is a slightly dodgy appropriation (and a weird trend) but there's no knocking the hock.

Rating: Four stars (out of five)