Chin Chin

I just had a 45th birthday recently and my husband took me to Chin Chin Restaurant. I've heard so much about Chin Chin and how awesome it is. Had been wanting to have a meal there for so long and finally my time has arrived :-)

So firstly, you will need to arrive early to avoid long waits for a table as they don't take any bookings for groups of less than 10 people. We arrived at about 11:30am and there was already 2 groups of people before us waiting for a table. We were ushered to the bar to wait and I must say that the service was fantastic. Really prompt attention but not pushy. The wait was not long, just as long as a bathroom visit's. The menu was sufficiently extensive and very tempting so we opted for the "Feed Me" option, which is a degustation meal of about 8 dishes so you get to sample a really good variety of their offerings for only $69pp. The food arrived quite promptly too.

It was a party in my mouth from the first taste! We had 3 appetisers - kingfish sashimi, salt & pepper calamari with thai basil, and corn fritters with a really great sambal sauce. The picture above is of the corn fritters. A full serve has more fritters before we dove in. I just wanted a photo of the awesome sauce that got me all inspired. The addition of thai basil makes the already favourite classic calamari really delicious. The kingfish sashimi was our favourite appetizer. It was just really, really good! Slices of really fresh raw kingfish on a mix of thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, spring onions, coriander, chili and thai basil. So fresh, so tasty, so yummy!

Next came a twice cooked beef ribs dish with a lime, garlic and green chili dipping sauce. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of beef but I have to say this has become my favourite beef dish. It is just so, so good! The beef was really tender and falling off the bone, smothered in a thick and sticky sweet savoury sauce and cooked to perfection. The dipping sauce provided a really nice contrast to the taste of the beef that really complements it. Yum! The other dish is a slightly unusual one. It's a barramundi apple salad with coriander and mint served together with a chilli pork belly drizzled with crushed peanuts. It's like two complete dishes on its own meant to be served together. Delicious on their own and works together too. I love fish, but here I prefer the pork a little bit more as I felt that the fish was slightly overcooked. But still so yum nonetheless.

And then only the main dishes - soft shell crab curry, and green beans with sambal and cashew. These were served with steamed jasmine rice. My favourtie dish of the overall awesome meal was the soft shell crab curry. Crispy deep fried soft shell crab, stirred through a really, really yummy curry sauce. Even the green beans were so wonderful with the sambal and topped with cashews. I ate so heartily that I didn't stop to take photos. We were meat to get 2 dessert after this but we were so happily stuffed by then that we opted for just 1. It was a really interesting palm sugar ice cream with salted crunchy honeycomb and lime syrup. A really delectable fusion dessert.

Overall that was quite an unbelievably great meal that's a taste explosion in the mouth from the start to finish. Chin Chin is undoubtedly my most favourite restaurant in Melbourne to date. Really happy customer and birthday girl :-D

#favouritefinds #restaurants