If Chin Chin is trying to captivate me and seduce me into a long term relationship, it’s going about it the right way.

(Disclaimer – my friend Jess Ho works at Chin Chin – but not even she can get you priority seating!)

The large (cavernous?) space on Flinders lane uses the best of what it’s got; high ceilings, a corner location; a serious gap in the market; fills it full of comfortable furniture (not too full!), eclectic music and “beautiful” people; and serves up tasty, interesting food of SE Asia for me to share.

We had a fun night, 5 of us, an easy wine choice (in carafes from Yabby Lake  winemaker Tom Carson… Pinot Grigio or Pinot Noir) a moderate beer list with many from  SE Asia, a few cocktails to start with and intelligent, smooth service (“I’ll let you have some more time with the menu, then come back and talk about wine “, says our “wine guy”)

The service snaps along, pacey but not pushy. I doubt you’d want a long, languorous meal here (although a bar session could be quite tempting), but we didn’t feel rushed.

We ordered

• Chin Chin Pork “Roll Ups”  - red braised suckling pig, with pancakes, slaw and sour herbs $16 Spicy corn and coriander fritters with iceberg lettuce and chilli jam  $8
• Crispy Barramundi & green apple salad with caramelised pork, chilli and lemongrass $24
• Steamed spanner crab salad & chicken salad with ruby grapefruit, coconut and fragrant salad $23
• Salad of organic silken tofu, banana blossom and thai basil $16
• Massama curry of coconut braised beef brisket $18
• Son in Law Eggs with Chilli jam $8

And 1.5 litres of Pinot Gris.

I guess the “hardcore” will say it’s “panasian” in a derogatory sense, but I’m more than happy to explore different spice mixes and flavours in the one meal.

It’s all geared to be comfortable, approachable and somewhere you can’t wait to return to. If they were open for lunch I think I’d be back tomorrow, but until that happens, I’ll drop in for dinner / snacks in the next week I reckon. I want those corn fritters again, and some more massaman curry, I didn’t get to try the eggnets, or the oysters, or the tripe salad, or the house made noodles, or so many of the dishes others have been raving about … Next week!

(There are no photos because it was too dark and I was having too much fun to really bother with manually adjusting settings – can there be any higher praise?)

Billy from Half Eaten really likes Chin Chin.

Ed for Tomato seemed to enjoy it – and was sitting next to us on his what third? or fourth visit.

Anyway, I happened to notice the Lindt Concept store in Collins street, and seemed to remember someone mentioning something on Twitter about a new flavour of their intense range, so I popped in and noticed Blueberry Intense (which is on for dessert tomorrow) and as I was paying for it – a range of macarons.

Oh well, nothing to lose…bought a pack of six, although if it had been less crowded and the girls in front of my less ditzy about ordering the bloomin’ things, I would have grabbed a couple of different flavours.

They came nicely packaged, and they survived the tram trip home mostly intact (which is sometimes no mean feat for a human, let alone a macaron)

The flavours I think I have landed are Champagne, Strawberry, 70% dark chocolate, hazelnut, pistachio and umm…passionfruit.

Other flavours Milk chocolate, Vanilla, Blackcurrent, Peach, Roselli, Coconut. The Roselli needs to be tried, Rose, ginger and white chocolate ganache.

I decided to “sample” the pistachio before I have to share with JB as it was a “bit squished”.

The shell was coloured, but not flavoured and was chewy with a smooth crispy thin shell, the ganache was nice and soft as I’d been carrying them around with me all afternoon, and they haven’t been refrigerated and it had an OK flavour of pistachio, with a quality white chocolate taste.

Not bad really – certainly better than I expected

Bet they’ll run out the door with all the Masterchef BUZZ about macarons.

**the Champagne one was fragile (broke lifting it) and weirdly smelt boozy but tasted of nothing much at all.

Update: The “strawberry” one actually had no flavour at all besides eggwhite and white chocolate. I was disappointed with the artificial flavour of the passionfruit, I’m not a huge fan of hazelnut flavoured sweets , and therefore the 70% chocolate flavour stood out as being a plausible flavour, and quite a nice one.