Local Hawker Dishes 🇸🇬

Five juicy meatballs in rich aromatic broth. Seriously this broth packs a huge flavour punch. The herbs remind me of five spice, and it’s such a hearty and warming bowl of soup. There’s some water chestnut cubes inside the soup, which are refreshing and add a crunch. The handmade meatballs are really really nice too. They’re seriously juicy, and not dry at all. Apart from making super good egg noodles, these people know how to make a mean bowl of meatball soup! Recommended!!!

From Mohamed Raihan Muslim stall:

Visited Ayer Rajah Food Centre for a late dinner. Most of the stalls left open were the mamak stalls and as we were sharing our plate of Indian Rojak, this diligent stall owner came to ask if we wanted to order anything else.

The maggi goreng was prepared quickly. The bright red noodles had broken into short strands after being tossed with cubed potatoes, beef, onions and egg, and they were a tad on the salty side. Not the best plate of maggi goreng, but good enough for a quick fix.

Broth is excellent and very flavourful. Even without the addition of milk, the soup is thick and cloudy. This bowl comes with fried fish which is fresh and tender. The fried fish is battered nicely, not too thick. If you can’t decide to go for fresh or fried fish, Xin Yuan Ji has got your back with the mixed fish soup that’s slightly more expensive but gets you the best of both worlds. Note that there’s a lot of sediments at the bottom of the bowl which are gritty and sandy so avoid disturbing the base while savouring the soup.

Truly a comforting bowl of soup for a rainy day or when you’re under the weather. Each bowl is served piping hot, and even with my ailment-dulled senses, the cloudy fish soup was flavourful and sweet. Aside from the “fresh” fish slices (I’m not sure why they included the quotation marks in the menu), there’s also a few large cubes of silken tofu, bok choy and tomato. They’re generous with the fish which is indeed fresh - the flesh is tender and bouncy, plus they’re large and thick slices so you can really savour each piece! It’s yummy on its own, but I loved eating it dipped into the light soy sauce with chilli padi for an extra sweet, salty and spicy kick. As you reach the bottom of the bowl though, try to avoid disturbing the bottom as there’s a lot of sedimentation at the base. It’s gritty and sandy, probably some ground up crustaceans or shellfish that gives the soup it’s amazing aroma and flavour.

I’ve visited Beauty Nutritious Soup numerous times and love the pumpkin rice at this stall but the standard seems to be inconsistent. Today’s pumpkin rice was tasteless, and tasted almost like regular white rice. It’s still soft and has better texture than the regular white rice at this stall though (the white rice has a texture like plastic beads). Can’t complain for affordable Kopitiam food, and can only try my luck again next time.

Simple and a perfect addition to a bowl of steaming hot soup. The veggies are blanched just long enough so that they keep their crunchiness and texture. The oyster sauce is not that salty, but it’s good enough to impart some flavour to the vegetables. The best way to eat this is to load up on the aromatic shallots with each stalk to get maximum crunch, sweetness and flavour with each bite.

Ordering soups here can be a hit or miss depending on the day or time you visit. There are many factors that go into it - the people working that day, how long the soup has been boiling for, how long the meat has been boiling for, etc, that it’s quite inconsistent with each visit. Usually, I find the taste of the herbal chicken soup quite good anyway - although some days might be richer and more flavourful than others. The chicken is more inconsistent. Some days it’s fall off the bone tender, while on others, it’s tough and requires effort to extricate the meat. Today’s broth was not bad, probably a 6.5/10 based on all the times I’ve visited, and the chicken was a 6/10 which was not tender enough to pull off the bone with ease, but also not hard and dry as a rock.

An affordable packet of really satisfying fried noodles and fried dishes. For this, I had a mix of fried dark bee hoon, kuay tiao, fried cuttlefish cake, taukwa, and stir fried long beans with some sambal chilli on the side, which set me back only $3.20.

They have quite a few fried noodles to choose from - bee hoon (white or dark), maggi noodles, yellow noodles and kuay tiao. Compared to other economic noodle shops however, they have relatively few ingredient options. Only two vegetables (cabbage and long beans), and perhaps about 10 fried ingredients including egg. Nonetheless, their dark fried bee hoon is really solid. I love the bee hoon here as it’s moist and slides easily down the throat, but isn’t too oily and soft. It’s got flavour on its own, but tastes even better with the sambal. The kuay tiao is pretty good too. I’d like more vegetables offered but both the stir fried cabbage and long beans here are good, and I love the fried tau kwa. Convenient, no frills, affordable economic bee hoon right here.

If you’re not a fan of KKM, there’s also ee mian available at this stall. While you can request for them not to cook the KKM for you when you takeaway (they’ll package it in a separate plastic bag), Ee mian might be a good option for those who are just too lazy to cook those instant noodles at home (who wants to wash up right?). These noodles probably hold up the best in a takeaway situation as compared to KKM, Mee Sua or mee hoon kueh, and don’t make the broth floury and cloudy so you can best enjoy the richness and sweetness of your broth of choice.

Favourite ke kou mian stall (and probably the only stall I would buy instant noodle soup from) because the broths here are just incredible. Super aromatic, thick and flavourful. There are four soup broths - seafood, pork, tom yum and spicy, all of which are yummy but I went for the pork today. The smell from my takeaway containers were so incredible that I was in a real rush to get home to dig in. The soup broth was just as great as I remembered it, and there’s a good amount of vegetables and tender minced pork balls, as well as an egg hidden in the broth.

In addition, other than KKM, they do sell other types of noodles such as ee mian, mee hoon kueh, sheng mian and mee sua so I decided to go for something slightly less unhealthy today. The mee hoon kueh here is hand torn, each piece is irregular in size and thickness which I absolutely love. However, it does tend to be on the doughy side and becomes soggy quickly especially if you pack it to go.

Wait time was approximately 20 minutes at 8am on Sunday - you won’t see how many people are waiting, but you’ll get a queue number after you order.

This is still one of my favourite comfort foods to have on a leisurely weekend morning - accessible, affordable, and oh so yummy!

Heard about the Bedok-style bak chor mee soup that has been making waves in the East. I’ve always been a sucker for mee pok dry, and always opt for dry noodles if possible. I have never tried a soup version of mee pok but here I am.

My first impression of this dish is that the soup is extremely fragrant. Caught a whiff of the aromatic broth when it was served and I could not wait to dig in. Apart from the generous amounts of minced pork, there’re two dumplings and some meatballs hidden underneath the noodles. The broth is really delectable - thick, cloudy, savoury, yet sweetened from pork bones. Coupled with the pieces of lard thrown in and the tender minced pork, I slurped up every last drop of the soup. The mee pok was a little disappointing as it was soft when it first arrived, and became even soggier. I would’ve preferred it to be undercooked and have more bite, especially since it softens further in the hot broth. I did appreciate that there was no overpowering smell of ammonia, however, I didn’t enjoy the noodles much. Perhaps the mee kia would have been a better choice. The dumplings are also quite small, with not enough filling in them to invoke ‘shiokness’ when bitten into.

Overall I’m still not convinced that bak chor mee should be eaten in soup. What would be infinitely more satisfying in my opinion would be a dry bak chor mee option with the amazing pork broth on the side!

Located in the same Coffeeshop as Soon Heng Pork Noodles, this shop serves up fried carrot cake as well as healthier, low calorie options featuring spinach soup.