Chin Chin: The Melbourne Restaurant I Miss the Most
I’ve been back in Canada for a bit, and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to write about! I’ve been in Lethbridge, AB for a few weeks, and to put it mildly, I don’t love the food scene here!
Then James Grass started posting about being back in Australia. Coffee runs. Markets. Dinners that look better than anything near you. It’s good content. Annoyingly good. And it did something to me. I started reminiscing.
I lived in Australia for two years when I was 25. Worked in the industry, but felt more like a vacation. Not a gap year. I lived it. Late nights. Early coffees. Double shifts. Staff meals. All of it.
Melbourne, mostly. It might be my favourite city in the world. New York is still number one. I won’t lie. But Melbourne is right there. Have to admit it. There’s something about it. The pace. The people. Really, it’s the food and the setting.
I’ve eaten at some incredible places there. Attica is still my number one restaurant of all time. Nothing touches it. But that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And it will stay that way. If I’m dropping $700 on dinner, I want it to be somewhere new.
But there’s one I miss the most. The one I do wish I could return to.
Chin Chin isn’t trying to be the best restaurant in Melbourne. That’s not the point. Even if it might be. It’s loud. It’s packed. It’s chaotic like every dish. It sits right there on Flinders Lane like it owns the street. And in a way, it does. There’s even a couple more now, in Sydney and Geelong. There are better restaurants in Melbourne. More technical. More refined.
But nobody does this better. It’s the room. That big, open, hall-style space. Tables tight. Music up. Staff moving fast but never frantic. Cocktails everywhere. People leaning in, talking louder, laughing more. It’s genuinely a bad place to go alone, and I never say that. You’ll feel FOMO for the perfect group hang. Australians are masters at this kind of dining. High energy without it feeling stressful. Busy without feeling rushed. It feels like a party you didn’t plan but somehow got invited to.
But honestly, what I miss most is the menu. I’ve had great Thai food since. Pai in Toronto is incredible. I love it. But when you’ve lived in Melbourne, the standard shifts. No offence.
Chin Chin just hits different.
Kingfish sashimi. Bright. Sharp. Lime, chilli, coconut. Crispy duck with pancakes. Sweet. Salty. Crunchy. Pork belly. Charred, sticky, herbs cutting through the fat. You tell yourself you’ll slow down. You don’t. Drunken noodles come in hot. Wok heat. Smoke. Big flavour. Acid. Heat. Sweet. Herbs. Fat. Again and again.
Caramelized sticky pork sour herb salad served with a chilli vinegar dressing. Twiced-cooked beef short rib with shaved coconut salad and prik nahm pla. Dry red curry with roasted pumpkin with baby corn and asparagus.
Australia is also huge on the “Feed Me” option where you basically get it coursed out for you to try as much and a little bit of everything. The best of the best. Chef’s choices. In Aus, we always recommend it.
But make sure the beef rendang is coming. I still think about this dish. Years later. Beef rendang curry. Cumin. Coriander. Toasted coconut. It’s rich but not heavy. Deep but still bright. I’ve had better meals. I know I have. But I don’t think I’ve had many dishes that stuck like that one.
The drinks don’t hurt either. Cocktails with names you forget but flavours you don’t. Fruity. Spicy. A bit chaotic. Built for the room. Built for the pace. Your glass is never empty. It all just flows. That’s the thing about Chin Chin. It works. There’s a gimlet on this menu made with Thai gin, lime leaf instead of just lime juice, sudachi (a green Japanese citrus fruit), and Chartreuse.
The idea that with any great meal you remember years later, you usually don’t recall specific dishes, but actually who you were with or how it made you feel? Here, it’s all of it. You’ll remember specific dishes without even analyzing anything. You’re just in it.
I travel a lot now. Long stretches. Different cities. New restaurants all the time. Australia is far. Seventeen hours. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. And still, I find myself wanting to go back for a month. Maybe two. For the beaches. For the Australian Open. To see old friends. To walk along the Yarra again. To hit fifty coffee shops I’ve never been to in the best coffee city in the best coffee country in the world. All of that.
But when I really let myself daydream…When I stop pretending. My imagination always comes back to Chin Chin. And that beef rendang.
AUTHOR: Hogan short
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