ChiChi Kitchen is a compact, licensed dinner restaurant on St Asaph Street with a deliberately narrow focus: crafted pasta and sauces that are willing to move beyond strict Italian convention. Founded in 2016, it divides the menu by oil, tomato and cream foundations before branching into ravioli and risotto. That structure makes the cooking easy to understand while leaving room for the fusion touches and unexpected flavour combinations that give the restaurant its individual voice. Reservations are available for the evening service.
The oil-based section shows the kitchen's attention to pasta itself. Fresh squid-ink linguine is paired with olive oil, garlic, peperoncino, anchovies, capers and Italian parsley, letting saline and herbal notes carry the dish without a heavy sauce. Aglio e olio appears in both a stripped-back vegetarian form and an anchovy version with cherry tomatoes, each finished with Pecorino Romano. These plates are fragrant, direct and useful for diners who want texture and seasoning to remain in the foreground.
Tomato and cream sauces take a more playful route. Chicken rosé fettuccine combines tomato and white sauces with rosé wine, bacon, chorizo, chicken, garlic and spring onion. A spicy tomato sauce folds three varieties of mushroom through onion and celery, while the cream section offers mushroom fettuccine with roasted almonds and cracked pepper. The leek-and-bacon mafaldine draws on Welsh flavours, pairing the ribboned pasta with a creamy cheese sauce and almonds for a distinctly comforting plate.
House-made mushroom ravioli deepens the restaurant's emphasis on fungi, matching a three-mushroom filling with creamy mushroom sauce. Gorgonzola campanelle offers a sharper cheese-led alternative, and the mushroom risotto brings shiitake, white button and Swiss brown mushrooms together in a classic rice format. Several of these dishes are marked vegetarian, giving non-meat diners genuine choice within the core menu rather than a token substitute. The result is a focused restaurant where pasta shape, sauce weight and ingredient character guide the decision.
Address: 270 St Asaph Street, Christchurch Central City, Christchurch 8011, New Zealand
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