Chef David Melbourne – Pictures, Review & Menu

It was my partner’s birthday on Friday and we had big plans for a night out in the city to celebrate on the following Saturday. I don’t think we’ve actually been out to dinner alone without the kids since our first son was born about 2.5 years ago, so this was a pretty big deal for us to get her mum and sister to stay over and babysit the kids for us (our other son is 6 weeks old).

Kayla chose to celebrate her birthday dinner at Chef David, a very cool-looking Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, Victoria. She had seen videos of it on TikTok and it looked great. Chef David offers Sichuan-style cuisine by chef David Li, who specialises in peppercorn and dried chilli.

The traffic was terrible getting into the city, it made us 10-15 minutes late for our 6:30 pm booking at Chef David in Melbourne, which was stressful, as I hate being late for things and was worried they might cancel the booking. When we arrived though, the guy said it was fine and that we would have to just make sure we eat quickly because our booking is only until 8 pm. This seemed like a pretty easy thing for us to do. I’m a pretty fast eater and Kayla had hardly eaten at all today as she had spent 7 hours getting her hair done in preparation for this and forgot to get any food. Given that we were told that our booking was until 8 pm only, we became very conscious of how much time we had left.

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We were seated upstairs at Table 23 with two women on one side and a couple on a date on the other side. Next to each of them was a TV screen that was live-streaming the resident DJ from downstairs. The decor was very nice and the atmosphere and lighting made the place feel really trendy. We used an iPad to view Chef David’s menu and order the food, which felt like a good modern touch. By 7 pm at the latest, the waitress then took the iPad away and we waited. The people at the tables next to us already had their food piling up.

We ordered the following:

• Peachy Oolong $12 (non-alcoholic drink for Kayla)
• Half Duck with 12 Pieces Pancake $48
• Pork Belly Skewers x 8 $15
• Duck Fried Rice $22
• David Signature Tap Beer 1.5 Litres (price unclear)

Chef David Pork Belly Skewers

The Pork Belly Skewers came out at 7:32 pm. I wish I got a better photo of them, there was actually a light overhead at the centre of the table which would have been great for lighting it up better, but since the staff had placed these to the side, we left them there as we thought the rest of the food and drinks would be coming soon, so we left these in that spot. Given that the portions of Pork Belly were very thin and small, we demolished these very quickly. I added a mix of crushed peanuts and chilli powder to them from the supplied containers. These were very nice but the serving size was smaller than we expected. The picture was very zoomed in and cropped which made it look like these pieces of pork belly took up most of the skewer.

Whilst waiting for our drinks and the rest of our food I pecked away at my bowl of crushed peanuts and the chilli powder. The peppercorns in the chilli powder made my lips and tongue feel numb, an effect called paraesthesia, which was interesting.

Drinks

Our drinks arrived at 7:39 pm after we had finished the pork belly. We were quite perplexed as to why it took so long to bring the drinks out. Most restaurants will typically bring these out as early as possible so that you might buy another after drinking it all too quickly. Part of the delay was due to the original Chef David Signature Tab Beer not being available, they must have asked me about this around 7:32 when the pork belly arrived as I had decided that I didn’t want to drink 1.5 litres of beer anymore and just got a glass instead. I instead got the Tiger tap beer which was $13, which was considerably cheaper than what I’d originally asked for. The people on the tables to either side of us were about finished with their food.

Peking Duck

The Half Duck with 12 pancakes arrived at 7:47 pm and it was delicious. I love Peking Duck pancakes and these were great, but the anxiety of having only 13 minutes to eat this plus another dish we were still waiting for meant that we had to eat it a lot quicker than we might have usually, which meant we had less time to really enjoy the flavour.

Duck Fried Rice

This arrived at 7:55 pm and we really just had to wolf this down as we were worried we were going to be kicked out soon. This was intended to be a side dish for us to share whilst eating the other items. The Fried Duck Rice was fine, but we didn’t really notice much “duck” taste to it. Whilst we were hurriedly eating this, the staff were setting up the tables on either side of us for the next people. I am certain that 55 minutes to serve fried rice in a restaurant like this is not normal. Surely they have big pots of this going all the time.

I think we left around 8:10 or so, as the next people were coming to take the seats at the tables next to us.

More Chef David Photos

When you first enter the main floor of Chef David, there is a little arcade with prize machine games, which might be handy if you are waiting for your table to become available.

Here’s the DJ on one of the TV screens near where we were sitting. It was interesting to watch him whilst we waited for our food, but he looked a bit bored.

Kayla eating the last duck pancake.

We sat near a balcony that overlooked the downstairs bar area, the lighting fixtures were really cool.

Chef David Review Conclusion

I really wanted to like the place, as the food was good and the atmosphere was really cool. The Peking Duck was incredible and I would recommend getting that if you go here. But with such slow service for us, I wouldn’t really recommend it. As I’m writing this I’ve checked the receipt and I noticed something interesting. It said that our order was placed at 7:20 pm. I have a feeling that the waitress forgot to submit our order to the kitchen as the iPad for taking orders was used only as fancy way of having a menu and notepad. It did not handle payments, we paid at the bar afterwards. I think that because we were 15 minutes late, the waitress was out of her rhythm and forgot to submit the order and went back and did it after noticing us sitting at an empty table for so long. If you look at the timeline again with 7:20 pm as the real order time, the food does appear to have come out quite quickly.

After this experience, Kayla looked up other reviews and I found that others have had similar experiences. My review on their Google Business Profile was 1/5 given we spent the whole time wondering if we’d been forgotten and wondering if it would be rude to ask where our food is.

Chef David Menu

Chef David doesn’t have a very good website, so here’s the full menu.

01. Cold

02. Peking Duck

03. Charcoal Grill

04. David’s Signature Grilled Fish

05. Add-on for Grilled Fish

06. From the Wok

07. Rice & More

08. Desserts

09. Cocktails

010. Non-alcoholic

011. Beer

012. Sparkling Wine

013. Red Wine

014. White Wine

015. Rose & Other Wine