China Spice - Melbourne

On my quest to find the best Kung Pao chicken I visited probably 10-15 Sichuan restaurants in the Melbourne CBD over the last 5 years or so. Some come and go quickly particularly if the KPC is ordinary. However there are about 4 restaurants with consistently good KPC. But! Charming Spice KPC blows the rest out of the ballpark with a great dish. I enjoyed cross checking my finding three times over the last three months - every time thumbs up hollering "This is It!" after about bite 5 when the full flavor profile kicks in.A large helping enough for two not so hungry people with a good ratio of soft chicken to crunchy skin-on peanuts. Particularly sweet sauce with a good sour balance and ample garlic infusion. The dried chillies are on the hot side but not excruciatingly so to have to be moved to the side half way in.Go ahead and eat them all. Some say that no one eats the chillies because they are more garnish than flavour but I dispute that advice.The best feature is the hidden blasts of Sichuan pepper spice that crunches under the teeth every second or third bite with an explosive hit of fragrance that numbs the lips for an instant. At just under $15 with a drink considering the ample portion it hits the spot as good value for money. I somehow loath the thought that I next have to explore other KPCs again to see if anyone can beat this. Or maybe I have now found KPC nirvana and will stray no further than Charming Spice. Who knows where lunchtime hunger in search of the perfect KPC will lead me next!

I really like Sichuan food! Boiled pork slices, boiled fish and beef, and a seafood soup are great, fried rice is also delicious, the price is reasonable, next time I will go with friends, the boiled fish is so delicious! the atmospheric there is very good and my friends and I had a really good time. the food is delicious and the fish is my favorite

With just a red staircase up to the restaurant, I have in the pass walked by thousand of times without paying it much attention. Since a friend introduced me to this place as I love my spicy food, I'm hooked and its my go to restaurant when I am craving for Szechuan. They have a huge menu and priced slightly lower than the other Szechuan restaurants in Melbourne CBD. Serving is generous and dishes are very well balanced- not too oily and wont end up feeling icky after your meal. Thumbs up! and definitely underrated.

There's NOTHING charming about this place!! Be warned! Stay away from this Resto. The owner/manager lady "charmed" us to go into a separate room as we are a party of 10. Not clear to us is that she will require us to order to the amount of $200! Just so we can sit together. We told her we are happy to sit at the main dinning area on two separate tables as there's plenty of space, but she insists she can't understand English and said we just need to order another dish and even if it does not reach $200 it's going to be ok. Guess what?!! She has already estimated it well. The bill came over $200!!! We've been telling her that even though we are 10, we have 3 kids who practically don't eat. We end up with a lot of leftovers. This is called highway robbery!! We felt fooled and trapped by this lady who pretends she can't speak English and said we had misunderstanding due to lost in translation. The food was not even great. NEVER AGAIN!!!! Sad I'm obliged to put in a minimum 1 as a rating. This should be a NEGATIVE rating.

Not your typical Chinese restaurant as just about everything on the menu has spicy/chilli flavours. Very popular with Asian heritage diners. A great idea, the menu includes good size photos of most selections and the serving sizes are very generous. You need to alert the waiter/waitress to your readiness to order or to request additional drinks but this seems to be the normal approach. We generally love spicy food and enjoyed our meal, although it would have been nice to have a non spicy option, other than the fried rice.