******** Please note – Permanently closed ********
Chi Kitchen is a contemporary Pan-Asian restaurant created as an exclusive departmental brand for Debenhams. Currently, there are two restaurants opened in London and Birmingham. The ground floor in Debenhams Oxford Street can accommodate up to 68 guests. While the third floor of Debenhams in the Bullring, Birmingham, can accommodate 108 guests, with both sites also featuring a welcoming champagne bar. Their menu, offers a great variety of tasty and exotic food influenced by Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean food.
We don’t often shop at the Bullring shopping centre and had not heard of Chi Kitchen previously. However, I am thrilled to discover this Asian food restaurant that serves high quality food authentic to South East Asia! I find a lot of Asian restaurants adapt their dishes to more western tastes which ruins the authenticity of the dish but not Chi Kitchen. It has been a long time since I’ve had proper Asian food that I would definitely visit Chi Kitchen again when I visit Bullring.
The restaurant offer a breakfast, lunch and dinner menu and last Sunday, we went for their lunch menu. This summer, they are offering a BBQ sharing platter until the end of this month! This is a great platter not to miss! It is not a cheap dish but it worth the money. All the foods are so tasty, juicy and you can taste the delicious BBQ flavour on the grilled meats. We all enjoyed it. The prawns and fish were so fresh and succulent. The meats were very juicy and tender. Overall it was delicious level of spicy but you might need a glass of water if you are not used to spicy food.
Next, we tried their star dishes like the Popcorn Shrimp, Udang Harimau, Nasi Goreng, Mixed Sushi platter, Sea Bass with Chilli & Lime and many more. Some of the dishes you seen here on the photos are not the full portions of the real dish. The manager offered us a range of the dishes to sample so we could get a broader flavour of the menu.
Udang Harimau
Nasi Goreng
My son loved the dim sum especially the prawn dumplings. These are the dim sum they offered in store: prawn, prawn & chive dumplings, and chicken & prawn siu mai dumplings. The skin on the dumplings are soft to chew. I personally love the fish eggs they put on the dumplings! Not a lot of dim sum restaurants actually put fish eggs – they tend to put orange colouring on the dumplings to replace the fish eggs to save costs.
The Popcorn Shrimp is definitely one to try if you like seafood! My son loves this dish. The portion is a good size and the deep fried tempura shrimp is served with wasabi mayonnaise and salad.
The sushi and sashimi platters are also a couple of our highlight dishes to recommend if you like raw fish. Each piece of fish is very neatly sliced and fresh. The sushi is flavoursome and gives you a nice after taste on the palate. The rice doesn’t stick to your teeth and the overall rolls are delicious. We all finished these within seconds!
Growing up in Singapore, one of my favourite foods is Indian roti and the dip – curry. What they offer here is the roti with Malaysian chicken curry. This curry sauce is very thick, coconuty, creamy and there are some great bite size chicken meats! The roti is authentic and tastes just the same as when I eat them in Singapore.
We also had the Sea Bass with Chilli & Lime and Grilled Asparagus. The chill and lime sauce works very well on the fish. The fish is not particularly big but it is very well cooked and delicious. The asparagus dish is juicy and delicious.
After trying out these dishes, Ms C and I were very full while Mr C and Mr K were both happily eating their desserts. They ordered a Mango cheesecake and Chocolate sphere. I am quite surprised and disappointed that they didn’t offered any Asian desserts like fried banana, Thai mango pudding, coconut sticky rice etc. They offer more western desserts like fondant and ice cream. The desserts did go down well for both of them especially Mr K. Any food that is made from chocolate never lasts very long with Mr K!
Overall I love the authentic food which really suits my palate and I would definitely recommend them to anyone who wants to try real Asian food. I also love the variety of cuisine which will suit most people. Some of the dishes are quite spicy but it is worth to try! I personally love the spiciness! The price range is slightly on the higher side but it is worth every penny.
Disclosure: We were invited to try out their food and drinks. However, they have not paid me for this review, and they do not exercise any editorial control over my review or anything else on this site.