Sometimes the most important thing to know about a restaurant is who it's for. Tuan Tuan, which opened last year on Queensberry Street, is a chain from Manila, based on a Vancouver restaurant (Mui Garden) that specialises in Hong Kong comfort food.

Unlike Tim Ho Wan or Hawker Chan, both outlets, whose steroidal grown and pandemic spread across the planet was due to them being awarded a Michelin star, this chain has arguably come here to target Melbourne's homesick international students.

You will find Tuan Tuan directly between Melbourne Uni digs and RMIT's city campus. It's difficult, without risk of injury, to spend over $40. It also shows in a menu that perfectly inverts the food pyramid's recommended intake of fruits and vegetables with things both sweet and fried.

But while Tuan Tuan may have landed with one of the more bizarre menus I've seen in some time, there is far broader appeal.

"This reminds me of something you made me once at 3am," says my friend as we consider the Macanese trio of rice. Tuan Tuan's specialty lands with its three colours of sauce – cheese, pesto and tomato, laid out like the Italian flag – all boiling with menace.

The sugary tomato goo conceals strips of crumbed chicken, the pesto, fried mushrooms, and mixed with the cheese you'll find chunks of seafood extender and prawns. A layer of rice underpins the whole Italian-Chinese situation, and while it does resemble something conceived many negronis deep, the carby, rich, salty-sweet comfort factor is remarkably high.

Half the menu at Tuan Tuan treads this unusual line. There's adventure aplenty should you wish to sample fish fillet with pumpkin and crabstick and creamy sauce on rice, or a pork chop with honey, tomato and bacon sauce (I'm saving these for the end of Febfast).

There are snacks better resembling (and perhaps better ordered as) dessert. Their four snow buns are similar to the famous barbecue pork buns of Tim Ho Wan, but these go full throttle. Biting through the sugary crackling coating and pastry of one into the no-holds-barred barbecue pork filling and a rich caramel lava of salted egg custard, I picture my dentist sitting upright somewhere, sensing a disturbance in the force. Again though, no regrets.

There's something to admire about a restaurant that doesn't try to sugarcoat what it is unabashedly sugarcoating. Tuan Tuan is that restaurant. But it also has far more delicate moments too.

Chicken gizzards, pork intestine and pieces of pork and beef tripe are all tender and more approachable than you might expect in a light, gently gingery soy broth. Cubes of turnip cake take a good bath in the fryer for a deep golden crust with pillowy centre and get bonus lift from gently shrimpy, spicy XO sauce and a tumble of fresh green fried onion twigs. Full marks. Fewer go to bland prawn spring rolls, though their fine netting wrapping is a textural trip.

All this sticks to a modest budget. There's no booze, which helps. Instead, sweet and tannic Hong Kong-style tea is served hot in cow-branded tea cups or iced in big silver tankards. Super soup sets score you a giant bowl, a starter and drink for $18. Everything is ordered in pick-a-box fashion.

This is a contrast to a room that's quite glamorous in a fairyland way. It's a field of gold-rimmed wooden tables and pretty, pale-aqua banquettes and curved chairs. Its major features include a giant tree festooned with twinkling lights and an installation of suspended glass orbs.

If you do go in for a set, make it a soup. The Malay laksa is a decent creamy bowl. Better: a spicy fish broth keeps the Sichuan pepper in check (too much and things taste soapy) and comes heavily loaded with vermicelli, bean curd, cabbage, thin sliced beef and a crisped slab of salty processed luncheon meat.

Our congee dressed with pork and century egg is a bit of a snooze without any table condiments for boosting, though the Chinese doughnuts are worth a nudge.

Dessert seems extravagant if you've already started with it in the form of snow buns, but with the modest display of greens through dinner a plate stacked high with ripples of shaved mango, or chocolate-flavoured ice with fresh banana and lychees is the best way to salve your mother's worry that you're eating right, however far away she is.

Drinks: No booze. Instead, Hong Kong tea and coffee, Horlicks, Ribena and soft drinks.