No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle - Ex-Western Chef's Bak Chor Mee

Most bak chor mee stalls treat the bowl of soup on the side as an afterthought. At No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle in Bukit Merah Central, it is the reason people queue. The stall was opened in February 2022 by Han and Chelsea, a couple who took the thick, cloudy pork broth of Japanese tonkotsu ramen as their starting point and rebuilt the accompanying soup of a traditional minced meat noodle around it. The result is a bowl that sits at the upper end of hawker pricing and draws waits of half an hour or more at lunch. Here is what to order.

Han spent more than a decade in the food industry before opening the stall, mostly in Western kitchens and including a stint at Burger & Lobster, while Chelsea worked as an accountant. The pair left both careers to open the stall in a coffee shop at Bukit Merah Central, and the name is a reference to their anniversary date rather than a unit number or a street address. They briefly ran additional outlets in Punggol and Bedok in 2023 before consolidating back to the original stall, where the two of them work the counter themselves. The queue is a regular feature at lunch, with waits of around 35 minutes reported at midday.

Minced Meat Noodle

The signature bowl is the reason to make the trip, and it arrives as two vessels rather than one. The noodles come dry, tossed in a blackened garlic oil, a savoury sauce mix and vinegar, which is optional and can be left out on request. On top sits minced pork, sliced pork, pork balls, handmade fish dumplings, crisp pork lard and a whole piece of fried sole fish rather than the usual scattering of shavings.

Alongside it comes a full bowl of the house broth, loaded with fish maw, pork slices and pork liver. Three sizes are offered, with recent visits reporting roughly $9.50, $11 and $13.50 as portions step up in ingredient count. Mee pok is the default, though mee kia is available for those who prefer a thinner strand.

Kway Teow and Mee Tai Bak — from $9

Beyond mee pok and mee kia, the stall serves the same sauce and toppings over white kway teow and mee tai bak, the short rice noodle pinched at both ends. Both hold the sauce differently from egg noodles, with the flat kway teow carrying more of the garlic oil across its surface and the mee tai bak trapping sauce and minced pork between the pieces. These are prepared to order in the same rotation as the mee pok bowls.

Dried sole fish, or ti poh, appears twice in the same meal, and its handling is one of the marks of the stall. In the signature bowl it is served as a whole fried piece laid across the noodles rather than crumbled into flakes, which keeps its texture intact through the meal. In the broth it is used in ground form as a seasoning agent. The flavour it carries is assertive and forms a good part of what regulars come back for.

The broth is the stall’s defining feature and the clearest break from convention. Where a traditional bak chor mee soup is clear and light, this one is thick, cloudy and opaque, closer in body to a ramen broth than to the pork-and-preserved-vegetable soup usually served with minced meat noodles. Dried sole fish is folded into the seasoning, giving the soup a pronounced savoury depth that carries through to the noodles. A further detail sets it apart: an egg is dropped in moments before serving, thickening the consistency and adding substance as the broth is ladled over the fish maw, pork slices and liver already in the bowl.

A bowl of bak chor mee built on an eight-hour pork bone broth, finished with an egg and topped with handmade fish dumplings and a whole piece of fried sole fish, is not a common proposition at a coffee shop stall. No. 25 Minced Meat Noodle opens early and closes when the pot is done, so arriving before the lunch rush is the surest way to be served.

Block 161 Bukit Merah Central, #01-3749, Singapore 150161
Opening Hours: Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri, Sat 8am to 2pm. Closed Wed and Sun.
Tel: 8283 0386