In order to compensate my cravings, I try a lot of altenative Asian cuisines leaning towards more of Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and Thai. Of late, I have so much craving for Thai food and I've had Thai food for the past 3 weeks! I even got my friends and La Boyfriend into Thai food as well and now they are all infected with Thai food addiction. After my amazing Thai food experience in Sydney, it is only natural to want to find that same adrenaline rush feeling again when I had Thai food in Sydney. I almost gave up looking for close to authentic Thai food in Melbourne until I came across Jinda Thai. No, let me rectify that, I didn't come across it, my colleague showed me some mouth watering Instagram food photos which her friend posted from Jinda Thai. The location of this restaurant is almost impossible for me not to go because it is not that far at all. In fact, the best way to reach this place from the city is via the train from the city which will take less than 5 mins to get there and 1 minute walk from the station, literally. As the location is right at the famous traffic congestion area, you will need an incredible patience to find a parking near the area. So if you don't live in the city, it is quite a mission to get there but for a good food? Why not? At least you know you'll come out of the restaurant with a happy tummy. My only advice if you decide to visit this restaurant is, to make sure you book a table or be ready to wait at least 30 minutes if you walk in as this place is packed almost all the time!
The first time I went there with a friend, we waited for more or less half an hour during lunch time on a Saturday and we didn't make a booking. Lesson learned, so I called to make a booking for dinner on Saturday and they told me they were fully booked. So not giving up, we decide to walk in and alas! We had to wait for half an hour again but we could place our order before we were seated so when the seats were ready, the food would be ready to be served as well (given that the customer doesn't walk out and patiently wait which we did).
I love the set up of the restaurant but I took some really crap photos of the interior, the photos don't do any justice because the real view is 10 times better and because there were so many people, I didn't want to be too obvious trying to take photos and be completely Asian about it. I'll still show you just so you get a tiny bit of idea. It is a combination of Thai vintage and modern set up, it's almost hipster-ish.
Second photo is a complete fail and shame on me but you get a bit of idea how it looks like inside. I promise the food photos are so much better. So many people go there with their family and some people do birthdays there as well and you can see camera flashing as people try to take photos so really, I shouldn't be ashamed of doing a completely Asian thing taking photos of food.
As we already placed our order while waiting to be seated, as soon as we were seated, the food pretty much came within 10 minutes and they came too quickly that there was not enough space to put the dishes in addition to our teeny weeny table. So we tried to eat our entreés as quickly as possible.
First, we had some pork spring rolls $6.90.
Whoever says all spring rolls taste more or less the same, I am totally on a scale of 1-10 (10 being totally disagree), I would rate 11. I don't think all spring rolls taste more or less the same. Anyone who says that pretty much hasn't tasted an extremely bad spring rolls yet such as those served cold during a conference. Spring rolls are such a common finger food served in a conference where the wait staff walk around with trays of finger foods and you always find some spring rolls and no matter how bad they can be, people still grab them and usually they are the first choice of finger food and popular too.
These ones though, are heaps better compared to those well commercialised ones because they are handmade and the ingredients are fresh. Most importantly, they were served still hot not cold like those commercialised ones. The sauce came with it was just sooooo yum! Needless to say, these spring rolls are pretty good. Before the spring rolls even reached down my intestines, the second entreé arrived.
In the menu, this dish is under appetizer page and it is called Gai Tod Nam Pla (in Thai) or Thai style deep-fried chicken wings $9.
I'll say the chicken wings were okay. The spicy mixed sauce tasted better than the chicken wings but they did complement each other. Unless it is compulsory for you to order chicken wings in every restaurant, I don't see it necessary and unless you are a massive fan of chicken wings regardless of the taste of course you are more than welcome to order this particular dish.
Again, before I even downed my last piece of chicken wings and spring rolls, our third appetizer arrived, which was soft shell crab served with pepper and garlic sauce $15.90. Um, in the menu, the dish doesn't come under appetizer. It has its own page dedicated to soft shell crab.
It's probably an exaggeration but this dish takes the cake. You can check with other food bloggers who have been to this place and do more research about this dish on google but the chance of Jinda Thai coming up in google search for having one of the best soft shell crab in Melbourne is pretty high. This soft shell crab is super duper yum. I'm not sure whether it's their method of cooking or the pepper & garlic sauce or combination of both but whatever they put and how they did it, it was magical.
A lot of soft shell crab can be too soft and soggy but this one was really fresh and only soft and tender in the centre (core body) and crispy on the legs. Hence the sauce was concentrated in the middle part only where the core body was.
My colleague visited this restaurant a couple of days after I visited to celebrate her birthday and she ordered the same dish but she chose curry sauce and she said it was really good so it is safe to say whichever sauce you choose shall you decide to give this restaurant a try, you won't regret it! Take the risk!!
Next, we had this yummy Green Curry Chicken $14.90.
My only regret with ordering this dish was that we didn't order any rice! We already ordered noodle to share so we thought we didn't need rice and foolish me who realised much later, how the heck were we gonna eat a curry dish without rice??? Curry with fried noodle?? What an insult to a culinary experience?? I was so disappointed with myself and I kept saying it would be such a waste until my light bulb moment set in. I decided to take away the leftover curry to mix it with rice for my dinner the next day. Although the take away box costed an extra $1, I didn't mind. I could feel La Boyfriend was hesitant and wanted to finish the whole thing by himself without rice but I just don't think that was advisable. The curry was just right, not too rich and a bit spicy but the breast meat was not tender and juicy enough. As we all know, breast meat can be very hard to cook sometimes because they tend not to absorb any sauce very well leaving the surface marinated but the inside of the breast meat still tastes bland. Hence, most people prefer chicken thighs but breast meat cannot go wasted so we still gotta eat it.
On a random note, the sauce that you can see in the photo down below was meant for those spring rolls earlier on.
This is the noodle I was referring to. It is called Pad Ka Na (In Thai). We chose pork as our choice of meat $14.90.
The dish I would say, was very similar to Char Kwey Teow (Chinese/Cantonese stir fried flat noodle) that you normally can find in any Malaysian/Chinese/Vietnamese retaurants. I initially wanted Pad Thai but La Boyfriend didn't want it and I wanted a different dish which was also stir fried noodle but it is apparently spicier than what we ordered. La Boyfriend cannot take too spicy food so that was out of the equation. My verdict is I think this dish is average. It wasn't bad but there was nothing extraordinary about it either. I felt like I could just get normal Char Kwey Teow from somewhere else with cheaper price and it would taste better too. In conclusion, I wasn't too impressed on this one.
To lift my mood, we ordered a very popular dessert this restaurant has to offer. Apparently, they're well known for serving this dessert and many people and bloggers are raving about this dessert. The first time I heard about this restaurant was from my colleague who showed me instagram photos of some cakes and they are no ordinary cakes. The cake is made of layers upon layers of crepes! How cool and crazy that idea sounds?? Well, I suppose people who are unique and try to do something different are always the ones end up succeeding with their life (just thought of throwing in some moral story). So from the look of it, it looks like ordinary cake but if you cut on it, you can see layers and layers of tiny and thin crepes. They come in many flavours and generally served with coconut ice cream and man, the ice cream even has frozen pieces of coconut in it. You have to pay attention in order to taste the bits and pieces of tiny coconut in the ice cream. The flavours of the cake, as far as I know are Thai milk tea, pandan, taro and I think there is one more which I now have a mental blank and cannot remember. I tried the taro one before and it was so good so then I went back to try a pandan one.
Can you see the layers of crepes?? :)
When I had the taro flavour crepes, they were not as generous as this time. Look at how much pandan gravy did they pour onto the top of the cake? I was ecstatic!!! I can't make my choice between which one is better, taro or pandan. Well, why not try both?? Even better, keep going back until you try all the flavours!!!! Their reputation is well deserved afterall. They're well known for their crepes cake and it did live up to the expectation! I walked up with happy tummy :) I can't remember how much the crepes cake was but they're not expensive anyway and if they're this good, what matters?
Note on finding the cake in the menu, the menu doesn't specify crepes cake, it only says "Cake & ice cream" under dessert and you have to ask the staff for choice of flavours.
I can't seem to find the website for this restaurant, so the details of the restaurant will be down below in my urbanspoon widget.
As per usual, feedbacks will be welcome!
