Over at Bedok Blk 511 Market And Food Centre, Bak Chor Mee here is as iconic as the Bak Chor Mees at Blk 85 Fengshan Market & Food Centre. Infact, in the past, whenever my family thought of Bak Chor Mee for breakfast in the morning, Blk 511 at Bedok never fails to come to mind. It seriously used to be the only place in the morning having a good competition for Bak Chor Mees.

Not so long ago, at Bedok Blk 511 Market And Food Centre, there used to be 2 stalls selling Bak Chor Mee in the morning. One stall is called ABC Bak Chor Mee(or something similar) while the other stall(which is the only one there now) is called Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian.

For those who remember, ABC Bak Chor Mee used to be on the left side of the front row and just situated beside the pau stall. They also used to sell Mee Siam and the cook was an ah hia with a thick moustache and he always walks around in the fishmonger boots. Ring a bell? In my opinion, that was the better Bak Chor Mee stall of the 2 in those days. Their bowl of Bak Chor Mee also used to have that slurpy good effect and their Bak Giao aka dumplings were to die for. Unfortunately sometime back, for some reasons, they decided to close shop and so now the only Bak Chor Mee stall standing at Bedok Blk 511 is Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian. If anyone happen to see a ABC Bak Chor Mee somewhere, let me know ok?

Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian is not my favourite Bak Chor Mee stall in the past because I thought their soup had too much of that ikan bilis taste. Not a fan of that taste, so I seldom eat at this stall though I do know of people who rave about soup. It all depends whether you love or loathe the taste of the ikan bilis stock.

Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian’s Bak Chor Mee

For $2.50 here, you get a mixture of meatballs and bak giaos in your bowl though I requested to have a pure bak giao version. The giao was good though seemed a little small. The noodles in my bowl had very good QQness and seemed to be on par with Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian, which I liked a lot. Another thing I liked about this Bak Chor Mee is the minced pork is very finely grinded. The doneness of the minced meat is also good and it’s floating around sporadically, which is how I like my bowl of Bak Chor Mee to be but yet the taste of the soup spoilt it for me. If only the soup can have lesser of that ikan bilis taste and also less salty. This could had displaced Xing Ji Ruo Cuo Mian in overall score if they can get the flavour of the soup to be more balanced.

It wasn’t ’slurpy good’ unfortunately, instead, that common ikan bilis stock which you even can produce at home by boiling ikan bilis in water spoils my bowl of Bak Chor Mee.

Price: $2.50

Conclusion: Terrific in some ways but entire bowl was fatally spoilt by the soup. Not enough sweetness and overuse of ikan bilis in the soup mean it had that ’salty ikan bilis’ taste which is commonly found in many other soup. Not how I like my Bak Chor Mee’s soup to smell like. If you’re a fan of ikan bilis stock, maybe this will score very well for you.

Likes: Noodles had good QQness. Minced meat was very well mixed in the soup. Dumplings push the score up a little.

Dislikes: Soup had too much of the ikan bilis smell. A little too salty. Dumpling is quite small.

Address		Overall Rating
Tian Nan Xing Rou Cuo Mian 添南兴肉脞面 Bedok North Blk 511 Food Centre St 3 #01-10 Morning: 630am to 1pm Evening: 630pm to 1am		Soup: 5/10   Noodles: 8/10   Bak Chor: 8/10   Dumplings: 7/10   Value: 7.5/10   Overall: 7/10