Review – Tin Tin Chinese Restaurant, BrindleyPlace

I can’t remember what year it was I first went to Tin Tin‘s restaurant; it was the mid-90s for sure, so it can’t have been long after it first opened. A friend was taking me out for my birthday, and when I said I didn’t particularly like Chinese food, she replied “trust me – you’ll like this”. She was right – there was no denying that the original Tin Tin’s was an ideal introduction to Chinese food for the unwary, striking just the right balance between being a bit more than noodles soaked in monosodium glutamate, but also whilst being ‘Chinese food for westerners’ still being a destination clearly enjoyed as much by the Chinese community as by the western community.

Many years later, the ownership of the restaurant changed hands, and the sheen seemed to wear off. Visitors couldn’t help noticing the place was rarely busy – it almost seemed like they were deliberately taking a long time to come out with the bill and then take payment just to keep people in their longer in order to add some atmosphere to the place. Whilst at the same time, orders came out of the kitchen suspiciously quickly, leading diners to wonder if their meals had just been spooned out of a giant container and microwaved rather than hand cooked to order, and rubbery chicken was the house speciality. Eventually there came the point where the restaurant closed, with a notice in the window saying ‘closed for redecoration, re-opening in two weeks time’. That ‘two weeks’ became several months, and eventually news got out that they had ceased trading altogether.

Then in a blaze of glory the restaurant re-opened with publicity proudly announcing it had been re-taken over by the original owners, and that the quality would return to form. We visited shortly after that reopening, and weren’t immediately impressed, but decided to leave it a while to give them chance to settle back in, develop new menus, and recruit some new, higher quality staff.

That second chance came last night with a takeaway – chicken and cashew nuts, and Thai-style chicken in a sweet chilli sauce, with two portions of egg fried rice.

We were initially reassured that the food didn’t come out straight away after paying, but sad to say, disappointment ensued when we got home and cracked open the tubs. And on reflection, the disappointed actually started on opening the menus to choose – I wouldn’t normally order anything with sweet chilli sauce (finding it normally tastes more like strawberry jam), but frankly there wasn’t anything else on the menu to excite me.

At least the sweet chilli sauce didn’t taste of strawberry jam, but that to be honest is the best that can be said about our meal. It was barely detectable that the rice was either fried or containing egg. The chicken and cashew nuts tasted just like that – chicken, with some cashew nuts, and not a great deal of flavour in not a great deal of sauce. And the Thai-style chicken was… well, I’ll be positive and say it didn’t quite taste like the sauce had come from a jar of Uncle Ben’s. And at least the chicken wasn’t as rubbery as it used to be. All for £17, which compares poorly with a takeaway ‘budget gourmet’ curry takeaway from Bar-a-Jee on Broad Street, and when one considers that the same meal eaten in the restaurant would then be pushing £25-£30 with drinks makes it quite steep for a very poor quality meal – and not a patch on Cafe Soya, which surely has to be by far the best Chinese (or Chinese-Vietnamese, if one wants to be specific) restaurant in Birmingham right now.

So my recommendation – if you’re in the Brindley Place looking for somewhere to eat and you’re thinking ‘Chinese’ – avoid Tin Tin’s.