Kiin | SA Weekend restaurant review
It’s a new eatery where Italian meets Thai, but one dish in particular is a real Eureka moment, writes Simon Wilkinson.
Food & Wine
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It’s the dip that no self-respecting party of a certain era could do without. Take a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese, plop its contents on to a plate and douse liberally in sweet chilli sauce. Serve with crudites or crackers, preferably Jatz of course.
As the inspiration for a fancy restaurant dish, this slice of yesteryear doesn’t sound too promising, particularly when the restaurant in question is supposed to be modern Thai.
But hold the eye-rolls and guffaws until you experience the combination at new CBD hotspot Kiin.
Co-owner/chef Ben Bertei replaces the Philly with locally produced burrata, a springy sphere of fresh mozzarella with an oozing soft centre. He places this ball in the middle of a pool of green nahm jim, the Thai salsa of herbs, lime and chilli that has more zip than a punk concert. And what do you serve to accompany an Italian cheese and a Thai sauce? The flaky Malaysian flatbread roti, of course.
Use that roti as a scoop and see how the sweet milkiness of the cheese plays against the heat and tang of the dressing. It’s a real Eureka moment.
And there, friends, you have the essence of Kiin, presented in a single floral-pattern bowl that, along with the plates, tea cups and jugs used, look like they may have been taken from Aunt Mabel’s china cabinet when she wasn’t looking. This is a restaurant where playfulness and exceptional flavours happily cohabit, where the fact that many of the combinations aren’t authentic doesn’t mean they aren’t prepared with absolute authority.
Bertei and co-owner/manager David Wickwar are both new to the state. They are old mates, even though in recent times the former has been in Brisbane (at the highly rated Same Same) and the latter in Melbourne.
When Wickwar moved to Adelaide, the pair began searching for the right location to open a business together, eventually settling on a former Chinese restaurant alongside the Royalty Theatre in Angas St.
They did most of the demolition work themselves, tearing down a suspended ceiling, knocking through walls, gutting the place completely. The exposed roof girders are now a feature in a design that opens the room to the street and sticks with natural tones and materials such as calico light shades and rattan-backed chairs. A bar and open kitchen run down one side, finished with counter seating.
By chance, that’s where we are, in a spot looking over the organised mayhem of a busy service, complete with woks being tossed over street-style charcoal braziers and the rhythmical pounding of a wooden mortar and pestle. All this entertainment helps fill a lengthy wait to order drinks and receive a menu that is split into five sections based on size and cooking method.
Ignoring the red curry cheeseburgers that are being assembled in vast numbers before us, we start with a “pop stick” of lychee that is stuffed with prawn meat, dusted in chilli sugar salt, then dropped into a betel leaf. A riff on two Thai snacks – the “miang kham” and the chilled fruit slices sold by street vendors – it is pleasant rather than mind-blowing and, at $8 a pop, a small let-down. That burrata changes the outlook instantly.
The mortar, it turns out, is used solely to prepare a som tum salad that is made to order, gradually combining fresh chilli, plenty of lime, tomatoes, beans and roasted peanuts. Semi-ripe peach successfully replaces the usual just-sweet crunch of green papaya. Everything else, including a measure of lip-tingling heat, is exactly as it should be.
Big chunks of quality Ortiz tuna are marinated in red curry and tamarind, then wok-fried with tomato and chilli. The combination is returned to the tin and served alongside rice crackers and slices of cucumber and green apple. Oh, yes we can.
Port Lincoln squid tube and tentacle is soaked in milk and spices, grilled, then sliced, before finishing in a pan with a yellow curry sauce. You could argue that the delicate flavour of the seafood is overwhelmed but the depth and complexity of that sauce is staggering.
Kiin already feels like a permanent fixture, the atmosphere intoxicating. A few wrinkles in the service, no doubt, will quickly be sorted. Get ready for a party, Adelaide. Starting with the dip.
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