Chinta Ria – Temple of Love, CBD

I’ve been wanting to visit the famous Chinta Ria at Darling Harbour for a very long time because it’s also known as the ‘Temple of Love’ and names like that just captivate me for some reason. Mr C and I joined the crowd of business people having lunch and used our Dimmi points to score us a free meal worth $50 (plenty), so it was definitely a great idea to come here for lunch.

First up was the Beef Rendang (shown above) as Mr C was craving some kind of curry, he did some initial research and found that this was one of the most popular curry dishes. At first I thought the beef was going to tough and hard to chew but I was wrong! It was very easy to tear apart from your chopsticks and very soft, plus the beef pieces were huge! Accompanying the delicious creamy curry was a splendid combo of spices and finely chopped herbs. Damn how I wish I was in Malaysia again.

Our second and also our final dish was the Mee Goreng. It definitely had the flavours that authentic Malaysian food would have so I was very happy with this dish, especially the sauces that were used. I loved how its tossed with a blend of spices and also a variety of diced vegetables & meat such as bean curd, potatoes, tomatoes, chicken, egg and prawns. I so  loved it and would order this again and again as I personally love Hokkien noodles. The tomatoes in the Mee Goreng also stood out the most to me because it was so juicy and went superbly well with this dish, I’m also a really big fan of tomatoes in any sort of cuisine.

The lovely rice that accompanied the curry from the Beef Rendang. We decided on coconut because we always have the typical Jasmine rice and wanted to try something different. I loved the smell of coconut but unfortunately this smell was soon covered with curry. 😀

I really want to visit Chinta Ria again some time, they have such a big menu and we haven’t tried almost all of it. The initial experience was great and I really like the atmosphere of the restaurant (incense everywhere!) so I’m hoping the rest of the food is just as good when we come back and visit the next time.