Chin Chin

Off the plane from Rad-City and it's straight to the CBD for some Pooey and Spuey eating time.  Chin Chin has been the latest 'It' restaurant in town for the past few months and we were gonna strike it off our Hitlist.  It's widely known that the wait for a table here can be up to 2.5 hours.  Seriously?  I doubt any restaurant is worth that much time.  But being 2pm on Sunday, we were given a table immediately.  Still, the restaurant was almost full.  Let's see what the fuss is all about.  

Oh yeah, it's a funky bit of space.  We are pushing into Hipster-ville though.

Spu contemplates the menu.  

The cuisine served here is best described as Pan-Asian with a heavy South-East Asian influence.  Each time I think I'm coming to terms with 'expensive' Asian food, I'm quickly reminded that I will struggle to fully convert.  In this instance, I baulked today at Chin Chin's $15 price tag for steamed kai lan with sesame oil and oyster sauce.  I will have to take into consideration that the price tag includes a bit of coolness, sitting in a clean environment, more reliably disinfected patron toilets and a kitchen whereby food hygiene standards are more likely to be enforced.  

The alcohol list is quite extensive but I should lay off the booze.  I settled on mocktail ($10??).  Some sort of fresh coconut, pineapple juice concoction.  I can't remember.  It was refreshing.  

Now for the food:

Omelette of Coffin Bay oysters with chilli and garlic sauce ($13).  Crispy barramundi and green apple salad with caramelised pork, chilli and lemongrass ($26). 

First of all, it was very obvious that the garnishes were fresh.  The omelette itself was ok.  I felt that too much sriracha chilli sauce was doused on it which destroyed my tastebuds and drowned out the flavour of everything else.  Spu thought it was ok.  Maybe the sriracha wasn't evenly distributed and I got a big mouthful.  The barramundi salad was a bit unexpected.  I didn't expect the fish to be mashed up and mixed within the salad leaves.  The fish was crispy but I felt it was overfried to the point that resulted in tough texture.  The pork was nice though.  The flavours individually were good but... so far neither of these dishes were going to be ordered again.  

Twice cooked Hopkins River beef short rib with coriander and prik nahm pla ($27).  Son in law eggs with chilli jam ($8).  

The rib was impressive because I am pleased when meat falls off the bone and melts in your mouth.  The treacle-like prik nahm pla complemented well - much like how nuoc mam makes a Viet happy.  The son in law eggs were cooked just how I like them - with a runny yolk.  In hindsight, we had egg overload and shouldn't have ordered the oyster omelette.  

The verdict?  Well, Spu and I both agreed that there was nothing deserving a huge amount of criticism.  Service was pleasant enough and while (especially the first two dishes) didn't blow us away, the food was good overall.    The rave reviews set your expectations high and this is probably the reason why I left feeling a bit ho-hum.

The flavours were certainly nothing new but the quaility of produce is what gives it an edge over your local Thai/South East Asian restaurant.  I've put it on the books for a return trip but there's no urgency.  Bearing everything in mind, Chin Chin definitely is NOT worth a 2.5 hour wait.  I'd give 30 minutes at most.