Following a trip to Hamilton Island my friends and I came to realise our love for South-East Asian food following a spectacular feast at Coca Chu, their newly opened beachside restaurant. The love was always there for this particular cuisine, but it was there that we all, almost in unison realised it – like the time you realise you’re in love with your boyfriend for the first time, it’s like “Ohhhh, this is love!”.
This past weekend with the girls visiting Melbourne, we couldn’t resist trying out one of the culinary delights of the city and naturally our options swayed towards South-East Asian. Now, Melbourne is wonderful and I’d argue has the best food in the world – but because of this, restaurants are kind of a bitch to get in to for more than one person. They either take no bookings, forcing patrons to line up outside or else book extremely far in advance! So of course when it came to Friday night’s dinner, although Coda and Chin Chin were suggested, they just weren’t going to work.
Luckily for us my friend is a pro at touristy type books and found “Gingerboy” in the Good Food Guide and although we could only secure a 5:30PM sitting, we decided to give it a go.
It’s set in a lane (as all good things in Melbourne are) off Bourke Street and later we found that although it’s in China Town, this particular part of town is really great and trendy off the beaten track!
We were lucky that the restaurant vibe was quite mellow to suit our mood (we were slightly tired from the night before) but you wouldn’t want to go there if you were after a bustling/party type restaurant. Although in all fairness, we were only there until 7:30 so who knows what happened after that!
Food wise though, the place was amazing! The menu, like most Asian places is designed to share and starts with street food-type options. One of our first options is sesame crusted kingfish tataki, shiso, garlic chips, avocado & soy-wasabi dressing which is to die for and typically modern south-east Asian and we could not get enough. We also have grilled wagu with a coriander & mint relish which was actually a meatball which we had not expected. Personally we all loved it, it was moist and flavoursome, however I think it was a pretty bad description given what it actually was.
The highlight of the meal was the whole fried baby snapper, roast chilli, lime dressing and hot & sour salad which came standing up right until the waiter then deboned it at the table (which, let’s face it, is always cool!). Finally, we were sent back to our childhood with a classic cinnamon sugared banana fritters with palm sugar & ice-cream.
It came to about $80 a head for 3 starters, 2 mains, a couple of cocktails and at least 3 glasses of wine which was very reasonable considering we felt the item prices are higher than normal (at least $15 for starters & up to $48 for mains).
After dinner we wandered around China Town which as I mentioned, was surprisingly cool compared to Sydney’s more traditional version. Little lane ways off the touristy Bourke Street revealed unique hidden bars like The Croft Institute which replaced tumblers & wine glasses with beakers & test tubes. Complete with a hospital bed & vintage wheelchair, the bathroom had us running out screaming as the ghosts of what was a mental institution before a bar, became a little too much for us!
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