At Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park, which is best known for high-end checklist dim sum, I recently enjoyed a Cantonese feast with current and future family members. We teamed up to plow through whole fish prepared two ways, sea scallops with asparagus, fried rice with dried scallops and egg whites, eggplant served “dragon style,” and roast duck, but crispy pork hock was the dish that made the biggest impression.

Elite serves Macau-style roast pork, which involves crispy squares of pork belly, but the crispy shank is better, closer stylistically to Filipino pata, but the meat is sliced from the bone. The skin retains crunch, with collagen-rich lining and lean, tender dark meat pork at the core. Elite serves the shank with a sweet chile sauce to counteract the ultra-savory effect. No surprise, pork once again helped to bring people together.

Dose of Vitamin P spotlights my favorite pork dish from the previous week.