Tina's Noodle Kitchen
The casual noodle offshoot of one of Melbourne's best-known Sichuan kitchens brings Chongqing, Sichuan's spice-loving neighbour across the provincial line, to a busy Box Hill corner. The core is a bowl of noodles in one of two broths: a pale, milky stock stewed slowly from chicken and pork bones, or a fierce orange number slicked with chilli oil, with pickled and half-and-half versions for the undecided. Into either go silky rice noodles, a tangle of vegetables such as oyster mushroom, bean sprout and konjac, and a topping of your choosing, from beer-marinated duck to Wagyu slices to hot-and-sour fish. The dry noodles make the sharper impression, tossed with chilli and, in the house signature, sweet little pipis. Around the bowls sit Chongqing street snacks: wontons swimming in chicken soup mild or ferocious, skewers dragged through chilli oil, glutinous rice cakes for afterwards. It is quick, cheap and unromantic in the best way, a place to eat with your head down and your forehead damp, then leave. For a suburb thick with regional Chinese cooking, it stakes out a specific corner of the map, Chongqing heat, in a bowl, from a kitchen with the pedigree to back it.