Amidst the platoon of eateries along Crown's Southbank dining precinct, there is a corner on the St Kilda road end that is home to the most awarded collection of restaurants within the casino. Given this, we made a beeline to this cluster of Qantas touting Australian celebrity chef Neil Perry's Melbourne establishments. The iconic Rockpool Bar and Grill (modern Australian steakhouse), Rosetta (traditional Italian fare) and Spice Temple (contemporary Chinese) had all bagged two stars apiece in the latest iteration of The Age's Good Food Guide. Given our tendency for Asian cuisine, we opted for Spice Temple which is headed up by young and rising Benjamin Pollard.

Bottling high expectations, we entered and we were  promptly escorted to a table for two. The premises is split into two levels with the ground floor much more aesthetically pleasing compared to the painfully dark lower level (good for ambience not reading menus).

Service was great with waiters attentive, dishing warm greetings and enthusiastic to explain the menu.

The menu itself is inspired by different regional provinces with each showcased their individual flare. Admittedly this is not the economical meal you will find in Chinatown and some of the dishes are quite pricey for average portion sizes. Nevertheless, we were looking at the "hot and numbing wagyu beef" accompanied by steamed rice and vegetarian noodles but upon our waiter's recommendation of something less dry, we went for the "House fried rice-house made lap cheong, peas and salted chilli" ($18) and some "Handmade vegetarian noodles with tofu, sesame and Handmade vegetarian noodles with tofu, sesame and Sichuan sauce" ($12).

House fried rice-house made lap cheong, peas and salted chilli ($18)

Handmade vegetarian noodles with tofu, sesame and Handmade vegetarian noodles with tofu, sesame and Sichuan sauce ($12)

We were a bit disappointed at the wait time for the food but the balance of flavours of was very well done. Now. The name 'Spice Temple' adorns the entrance for a reason and boy is the food HOT. We didn't even go for the extra spicy dishes marked in red on the menu but we needed a extended breather halfway through the meal. Some would label this kind of spice overpowering but as spice lovers, we quite enjoyed it. However this level of spice should be an occasional venture.

To cool down, we went for a "Lychee granita with poached gooseberries and elderflower" ($16) (unfortunately we couldn't get a photo) and it was another quite good dish that rounded off the meal nicely.

Having had a chance to sample Spice Temple and one of Neil Perry's restaurants, we will definitely be returning to have more extensive taste of the menu and popping into Rockpool sometime soon as well.

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