Chop Chop Chang's

Jubiventures! Once again we're out on the town for a quick lunch and catch up! It was her turn to pick and pay so off we go to Chop Chop Chang's!

This place!

So many signs up everywhere.

Their logo is everywhere

Here is their food and drink menu. That massive mural of an astronaut monkey is Chop Chop Chang aka Ham aka the first chimpanzee to go into space! Here is the wiki article about him :)! Our waitress told us when we kept looking at the mural wondering what it had to do with the place. I'm not sure how space monkeys have anything to do with pan-Asian hawker fare either but whatever.

Communal dining

Some little booths are available

Their bar

I ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee. It was cold and sweet, Jubi tried some and particularly liked it but I've honestly had better. The presentation of the drink weirded me out a little bit as it reminded me of how milkshakes are normally presented to you. I was expecting them to pour an inch or so of condensed milk at the bottom with a really dark coffee on top, this coffee wasn't half as strong as I thought it was. I always recall the coffee bit being almost unbearably super strong and dark in flavour until mixed with the condensed milk, it should be nearly undrinkable until the ice melts. Ah, that's just me though, I did enjoy the drink.

Not up to scratch

Nearly everything here is meant for sharing, so we picked a meal each and a starter since Jubi had already had breakfast that morning. We picked the edamame which were cooked in a master stock with furikake to dip into. The edamame were warm and wet, you can't really see it in the photo but the bowl is about half full of broth. The broth was not necessary and tasted mildly porky and didn't really add much flavour to the edamame beans themselves. If anything, the broth just made the entire dish too messy, since it dripped everywhere and you kept wiping your hands on the napkin. The furikake were a nice touch to dip the beans into, I have no idea what those nubbly yellow things were but they were tasty! Flaky sea salt and nori strips were also present.

Spare bowl just for the skins, nice.

Jubi ordered the chilled melon salad with iceburg lettuce, mint, Thai basil, coriander, cashews, chilli and lime dressing. It was a very crunchy salad textually from the combination of ingredients, I was starving so I ate a lot more of this than I intended to. The herbs were very refreshing as was the cooling water/honey dew melon balls throughout the dish. This was probably a good thing as the entire thing was declared unbearably spicy by Jubi although I barely flinched. She said several times that she couldn't feel her tongue and felt that it really detracted from the rest of the dish as she couldn't taste anything. I didn't mind the dish even though it contains elements of things I normally dislike, mint, Thai basil, honey dew and water melon, so I basically disliked everything in there, but I didn't mind it this time.

Crunchy/spicy

As I said, I was feeling super hungry so I ordered the Chiang Mai chicken curry which came with a peanut, cucumber and chilli pickle and I got a side of plain white rice with it. You could also get brown rice but I'm not a fan of its chewiness.

There were deep fried egg noodles, a massive chicken maryland piece aka thigh and drumstick together with a topping of shredded coriander. I loved the curry sauce that was in this dish, deeply aromatic, sweet, creamy and very mild in chilli compared to the last dish. Jubi and I kept spooning it over the rice to eat or slurping it up with the rapidly softening fried noodles. Jubi adds that she isn't normally interested in curry at all, but "dayummmm that's some good curry."

Crazy good

The chicken maryland pieces was moist and juicy but my biggest complaint was the size of it. Not in terms of the amount of chicken but the sheer physical size of it. How on earth were you supposed to share this with someone? Just dig in with your fingers and rip away chunks of meat? Take a bite each? There are no scissors, no spare plate or anything on which to rest this gigantic hunk of meat. Jubi and I are good friends so she sat and watched me rip apart the chicken, initially with chopsticks and a spoon but a few minutes later with my bare hands. Cubed chicken would have been easier to eat, but wouldn't have loaned that bone sweetness to the curry, catch 22 I suppose.

I enjoyed the pickle, it was very sweet and sour and cut through the richness of the curry very well. I ate all the peanuts and most of the cucumber, although I steered clear of the chilli.

Possibly the messiest meal I've had in ages

I also got some karma cookies which are basically fortune cookies that are used to donate to charity. I didn't take a photo or anything but they were lovely crunchy cookies. I can't remember my fortune either haha, I remember being unimpressed by it though!

Chop Chop Chang's
Atmosphere: 7, very bright and open space. We went during the day, but I can imagine it would get very noisy, very quickly at night.
Service: 9, wonderful service, we had a very friendly waitress who explained all aspects of the menu, recommended dishes, inquired after any little thing and wasn't fussed by the mess we left behind. She was the one who gave us the heads up about the Chop Chop Chang mural.
Food: 7, pretty tasty food, some of it is a bit hit and miss but its tasty if a bit pricy and the smaller dishes definitely rank on the smaller side.