Yam Mee Teochew Fishball Noodles - 209 Hougang Street 21

There's three hand-made fishball noodle stalls at Kovan Food Centre with a queue during every lunch time. This one has the longest queue. Don't let the short 8 to 10 persons fool you. While they have 2 boilers with 2 cooks and 2 order takers to complete your orders, supposedly the queue should move double time, they also have food deliveries orders that skip the queue and that ping non stop over lunch. Thus if you get an office order of like 20 packets ahead of you then that adds at least 20 minutes to your wait. My wait at 1230pm was 40 minutes. Menu starts $4 / $5 with fish cake add on $1.50, ngo hiang add on $0.50. Besides fishball noodles, another of their top orders were Laksa. Portion was big for its price, and I had ngo hiang add on. In essence, their Teochew style is light on flavour. Lighter seasoning sauce on the thin type vinegary Mee Pok Ta, a little closer to Minced Pork noodles as they added Minced Pork, Braised Mushroom and Meatball. One ingredient that you don't find anymore in Teochew Fishball noodles is Tang Cai or pickles. Which is nice here, both in the noodles and the light soup. Fishballs and fishcake slices light in flavour, very bouncy, probably too much flour to fish ratio. Can't complain at this price, but don't expect Song Kee standards. The star ingredient in this noodle is their ngo hiang. Flavourful and a steal at $0.50 a piece. Great value for a fishball noodle and the Ngo Hiang adds a star to the otherwise 3 stars experience.

Review December 2021 Still very delicious...Portion is above average :-) Delicious is the only word ! Been eating this stall for few years. The standard never fail to impress me. I order a BIG portion $5....Indeed is worth it.

Trusted the reviews but disappointing. Nothing to shout about. Dried version good ones the sauce mix is so good you’ll gobble up the bowl. But this I can’t finish the noodles even I’m hungry.

In the world of local noodle stalls here in Singapore, names of noodle sellers like Gimee Face, See Mee Again and Ai Mian Zi, which play on the word 'noodles' or 'mee', are a dime a dozen. Yam Mee, which is a funny twist to the word 'Yummy', probably isn't too much of a stretch. But what did surprise me was its popularity. To be sure, this stall has been around for quite some time and has its loyal supporters. Not trying to be a dissident voice here, but this highly raved noodle stall is really not my bowl of noodles - so to speak. Flavours are where I failed its noodle dish, as it truly lacked much of the flavours that are found in a good bowl of fishball noodles, and it even uses a chilli paste that's mass-produced in a factory. Good, secret recipe chilli paste is the soul of a good bowl of fishball noodles, if you ask me. Ask around and people will tell you that as well. The noodles were cooked well and bouncy, and the soup tastes good. But all these somehow did not change my opinion of their noodle dish. So, to me, this prolly won't be a place to spend my calories anytime soon. ?

Nice authentic Teochew Fishball Mee Polk served by polite Teochew store owner. It was slightly more oily with fried pork fats cube, and therefore added a table spoon of black vinegar to balanced it. $4 a bowl is a bit pricy.

There’s always a long queue for this stall that is in the inside row of the Kovan hawker center. I had the $4 dry mee pok with fishball and bak chor while my friend had the laksa. We shared a bowl of the fish dumpling (her kiao). I think it’s really just average, despite the long queues. Mine was a very big bowl of noodles and there was so much noodles, I couldn’t finish it (and I’m one to usually finish my noodles). The fishballs were rather hard and not bouncy at all. My friend’s bowl of laksa didn’t come with cockles but with clams (lala) which seems abit strange to me. She said the laksa is okay loh, nothing fantastically out of this world. (I guess that’s the standards of our food fare these days eh?!) The fish dumpling was decent but just barely, definitely a far cry from the Song Kee ones or from the Newton Hawker’s corner stall. The skin here was thick but it was at least gooey when u bite into it. They didn’t add ti poh (fried sole fish) to the pork filling, so that’s the biggest disappointment. Bottomline, not worth the queue.

Yam-Mee is indeed Yummy! There is always queue at this stall. The authentic Teochew mee and fragrant laksa are delicious. The stall helpers are very friendly. The only setback is that they do not allow top-up of cockles and taopok in the laksa.

Being one of the popular noodle stall in this food market, their service is good, polite and caring for elderly is one of the big reason why customers willing to q for more than 10min....at least 5 to 10 persons in q during peak hour. Their noodle are cooked well with good texture and tenderness. Flavor wise, some said their chilli are using factory ready-made pack, so far I taste good n fresh. And their other ingredients is also in good freshness, price has been increase to $4/bowl recently, but according to the option I received, I would said, is a decent option with great value. No complaints for that. If the Q is short when my next visit, I will join for another bowl of good fishball Mee Pok.