Tucked away in one of the busiest lane around the Melbourne city, who would expect to find a restaurant who can serve up Thai dishes with a modern twist. Did I mention that they were brilliantly delicious as well? The place was buzzing with a loud crowd on a Saturday night. Ambience was quite casual, with a bar left of the premise that can really help mask the 1 1/2 hours wait for a table and one would be asking - was it worth the wait? Read on and you can be the judge.
I could not recall what made me order this dish - pork roll up. Probably one of least brilliant dish for the night. Imagine peking duck with pancake but instead of lean duck meat with crispy skin, what you have here is shredded pieces of lean pork meat that came with a BBQ-like dressing and salad on the side. The shredded meat did not have much flavor to it and sadly, was rather dry. The BBQ-like dressing somehow managed hold the dish as a whole. Not a knock-out dish by far.
The next dish has a rather interesting name - son in law eggs. It is simply a dish of fried hard-boiled egg served with a rather flavorsome sauce and lots of fried onion. The eggs were cooked to perfection, with gooey yolks. The sauce was a little spicy and whatever the sauce is, it tasted pleasant.
The Crispy Soft Shell Crab with Papaya Salad was tremendously delicious. The crabs were fried to golden brown, and tasted absolutely divine. The papaya salad was very authentic, smashingly sour and addictive. However, sourness does not tickle your taste bud, you are definitely better off steering away from this dish.
And the dessert - Palm Sugar Ice Cream with Honeycomb was a delight. The ice cream on its own brought back childhood memories of those home-made ice cream that I used to have when I was a little kid. Personally, I am not a great fan of honeycomb but it blended so well with the palm sugar ice cream and the crunchiness of the honeycomb provided the perfect texture to complete the dessert.
Overall, Chin Chin provides the perfect fine dining in modern Thai cuisine. The dishes were relatively unique with fantastic flavors. Service is rathe average - given the fact that it is a very crowded restaurant. No reservations taken.
Chin Chin Restaurant
