I'm so glad to have the opportunity to come here.
In my mind I think that has been far too long.
You know, there was a time in my life when coming to Chin Chin was a near everyday decision. It was one of the options that always came up whenever we were trying to make a decision about lunch, and more often than not, we always came.
These days however the calculator works different, and I don't come downtown as often as I would like to.
Which then, makes dinner at this place a much treasured opportunity.
One thing about Chin Chin that I appreciate very much is their consistency.
How they do it, I don't know- it must take some effort- but whether it be a meal that I had seven years ago or whether it be a meal that I had just last week, my plate of Sam Lor Hor Fun is still the same.
It might be a world with this war and that war, and this economic situation and that economic situation, but they haven't reduced the portion of the hor fun, nor the quality of the fish, nor the quantity of the tau gey.
My plate of Sam Lor still, more or less, remains the same.
And it is precisely because of that which keeps me coming back time after time for this dish, and I don't (normally) order anything else.
I have heard of places where the chef changes, the quality drops, and the food standards fall.
Not here.
Everything remains the same.
What has changed, however, is the crowd.
When I first started coming to Chin Chin, the crowd was mostly local. Office workers, a random resident coming down to buy lunch, that sort. On occasion you might have had the rare ang mo coming in for a plate of chicken rice but that was usually either because he worked close by, or he was here with a bunch of colleagues all of whom were local.
These days however there are tourists.
Not the groups- Chin Chin doesn't seem to cater to them- but the indie tourists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and even South Korea. It's lovely seeing them pretty ladies all dolled up for the IG or the Xiaohongshu digging heartily into plates of chicken, cereal prawns, vegetables, or appetizer bites like hae zou the prawn rolls.
Of course there're still the office workers, but they are a more diverse bunch now. In the last few times I've been there I've noticed Indians (or maybe Sri Lankans), then Filipinos, then Indonesians, and even a couple of Thais.
The ang mos still come.
But they're not like the shirt and tie dude working at an office housed in a beautifully restored shophouse next door.
They're visitors.
Digging into a plate of roast chicken rice, a huge plate of fried rice, and two bottles of ice cold Tiger Beer.