Five elements, five floors

We cook the way the old texts read the world, in cycles rather than courses. Water feeds wood, wood feeds fire, fire settles into earth, earth yields metal, and metal returns again to water. A night here follows that turn. We pour cold and sour at the base, grill over hardwood in the middle, rest and ferment in clay below, and finish high up with tea, so the table moves through heat and quiet the way a long day does.

Potong lives inside a shophouse that has held the same Chinatown corner for more than a hundred years. The building was a family pharmacy once, and the scent of dried herbs still seems to sit inside the timber. We kept the bones and lit a fire under them. Our cooking reads the room through the five elements of old Chinese thought, water, wood, fire, earth, and metal, and lets each storey carry one of them. A guest arrives at the ground in cold brine and ice, then climbs five floors to close with smoke and tea at the top. Thai markets and Chinese technique meet on every plate, and neither one gives way.