If a restaurant spends five days preparing a single dish, the results better be good. They certainly are at Arc Food & Libations, a live fire restaurant from chef Noah Blom and his wife Marín Howarth in Costa Mesa’s OC Mix that invests five days to produce one serious Pig plate.

On my recent four-stop food tour of The OC Mix, Blom’s understated Pig ($16) yielded my favorite bites of the night. The Orange County native marinates pork shoulder in buttermilk and roasts the tender results overnight in the coals of his wood-burning oven. Blom, who reserves the “sparkle and crack” of orange wood for his grill, prefers almond wood for his impressive oven.

The flame-spitting oven at Arc is also where Blom finishes the pork, which sports a winning sear. Big chunks of juicy shoulder rest on a bed of creamy turtle beans that Blom accents with chives and crème fraiche. The finishing touches are crisp parsley and a maple reduction, which adds subtle sweetness to a savory dish. Even better: the cast iron serving vessel, which is standard practice at Arc, arrives on a stylish metal owl.

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