Friday lunch date

On Friday I had a lunch date with Jac. It wasn’t exactly a planned lunch date; Jac had taken a long lunch so that she could go to the shops and buy a new jacket to wear to the wedding – I asked her if she’d be able to take me to the optometrist so I could get the left leg adjusted on my glasses. It had been just a little too tight on the back of my ear. I’d thought my ear would adjust to in a few days, but a week or so later the pain was still there and I’d had enough. It took the optometrist just a minute or so to adjust and it’s been fine ever since. Anyway, since Jac and I were in Vic Park, we thought we’d grab some lunch. We did hope to eat at Ha Tien’s, which we went to recently for Lou’s hen’s night, but it was closed. Instead, we went to Ten Ten Kitchen, which friends of ours and readers of this site have raved about.

We both ordered off the lunch specials menu. Jac had fried rice with peking spare ribs (AU$7.50).

Fried rice with peking spare ribs  Close up of spare ribs

We ordered a dish of vegetables in oyster sauce (AU$4.50) to share. They tasted pretty good.

Vegetables in oyster sauce

I had the hainan chicken rice ($5.90). The rice was ok – not the among the most flavourful.

Hainan chicken rice

My first impression of the broth was that it looked too clear. It was very bland – it didn’t actually have much of a taste. It tasted as if the broth had been watered down.

Hainan chicken rice: the broth

The chicken was really cold. When I say cold, I mean literally cold – not even close to warm – I know enough not to expect chicken rice to be served piping hot, and that does not bother me. But the chicken was so cold that I couldn’t even eat the skin, which I usually love. The chicken did look good when it came out, and the soy sauce it was sitting in tasted beautiful, but the chicken was just too cold. What a shame. Jac said her fried rice was cold too. She liked her ribs though.

Hainan chicken rice: the chicken

I was disappointed. Although service was pretty efficient, dish size was great value for money and our food came out really quickly, I would’ve preferred to wait longer for warmer chicken (and Jac for warmer rice). I didn’t actually take very long to take photos (just the shots you see here) – the dishes were definitely cold to begin with.

The people sitting next to us seemed to enjoy their food – they had laksa and wantan mee dry style, both of which looked really good. The whole place smelled delicious. Perhaps Ten Ten does some dishes much better (and worse) than others. We’ll probably give it another go sometime in the future, but I won’t be back there in a hurry. As far as hainan chicken rice goes, I’ve tasted way way way better.

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