Rice Chinese Cuisine, Parkside by Big Fil

Back in Adelaide again for family business, it was time to check out more of Adelaide’s eatery options. First on the list was Rice Chinese Cuisine, recommended by a fairly fussy Hungry Pete as somewhere he’d only ever had good meals.


For a suburban Chinese restaurant the layout is restrained and tasteful. With its tiled floors, bright yellow walls, white ceilings and a few calligraphy based paintings on the wall, it is great demonstration that upmarket and stylish doesn’t have to mean cluttered or ‘blingy’.



For entrée we went with the chicken with jellyfish. Red and Pete’s view on this was that the flavours were a little ‘soft’, that they were used to jellyfish served with a bit of a spicy kick. To me however jellyfish is bland in taste but interestingly textured, a bit jelly like and slippery and this is the most important part of the dish. Consequently I think I enjoyed this more than they did.


Given the number of meat dishes we tend to go for we normally order the Monk’s hotpot as our nod to the healthy side. With tofu, snow peas, baby sweet corn, black fungus and vermicelli noodles, it’s a nice mix of flavours and textures. One thing which was noticeable though, I did think this version was sweeter than most I’d tried before.


At this stage it was time for the meat dishes to start coming out. I was curious about the chicken and prawn paste, which from memory was included in the chefs specialties. I was a bit surprised by its appearance, which kind of reminded me of taro. Taste wise I thought the chicken was a little dry and the flavour combination seemed a bit unusual but I think it was the texture as much as anything which has me in two minds. I am more used to the crispy skin of a fried chicken where this was a little different, softer with less crunch. While I can’t say I really liked it I didn’t dislike it either.


Hungry Pete’s tastes are broadly similar to mine so it was no surprise he ordered the stewed brisket in beef broth, another claypot style dish. A dish that’s is hard to go wrong with and this version was fine although the meat could have been a little more tender.


Undoubted dish of the night though, the bbq honeyed pork. While I am a sucker for sweet pork this was delicious, tender and with a great balance of fat and meat.


Overall
It feels in some ways I’ve been a bit picky with the dishes, but this is a restaurant that is obviously aiming for more than most Chinese restaurants around town and in general delivers. Even if the pork was the only dish I thought had a bit of a ‘wow’ factor the other dishes were consistently above average or better. Noisy and bustling, service was a mixed in that it was slow in delivering the food but when asked for things such as water for the table these quickly appeared. My major issue on the day was the $2 per person for both steamed rice and tea, which seemed excessive. If you are looking for something a bit more upmarket and don’t want to go into the city Rice Chinese Cuisine is a good option.

Verdict
Food - 7.5
Ambience - 7.5
Service – 6.5
Price – 6.5

Address
104 Glen Osmond Road
Parkside SA 5063
Tel: (08) 8373 7000