Yang Ming Seafood - Bishan’s Lobster Chee Cheong Fun Zi Char

At a coffeeshop tucked within a Bishan HDB estate, Yang Ming Seafood has built a quietly devoted following since opening in 2019 — not through prestige address or grand dining room, but through a menu that takes live premium seafood and reimagines it through the lens of zi char.

The restaurant arrived relatively young to Singapore’s competitive seafood scene, yet its signature dishes have already become the kind that regulars plan meals around: a lobster atop silky rice noodle rolls, a crab buried alive in salt, a chicken cooked inside a pig’s stomach. This is heartland zi char with ambition, and the tables are consistently full to prove it.

Andrew Lobster (Lobster Chee Cheong Fun) — from $98

The dish that put Yang Ming Seafood on the map started with a customer’s idea. A diner named Andrew once suggested pairing the restaurant’s live lobster with chee cheong fun, and the combination stuck — enough that it now carries his name on the menu. The lobster, available as Boston or the larger Australian variety, is cooked and laid across sheets of smooth, silky rice noodle rolls, then finished with fried shallots, crispy garlic, and a savoury soy-based sauce. The chee cheong fun absorbs the sauce and the natural sweetness of the shellfish, giving every mouthful a layered quality that a plate of plain lobster alone would not. For those wanting the full experience, the Australian lobster — priced by weight — offers a noticeably meatier result.

Salt Baked Crab — seasonal pricing

This is a pre-order dish, and the preparation explains why. The crab is buried in a deep vessel of heated salt and cooked through purely by the radiant heat of the surrounding mineral bed — no water, no steam, no added aromatics. The method draws moisture inward rather than out, concentrating the crab’s natural sweetness within the shell. The result is meat that is firm, clean, and flavourful in a way that wet-cooked preparations do not replicate. Diners regularly note the wait — approximately 30 minutes — but consistently return for it.

Pig’s Stomach Chicken Soup — $68–$78

One of Yang Ming Seafood’s original house creations, this is a pre-order dish that requires advance planning for good reason. A whole kampong chicken is stuffed inside a pig’s stomach, then slow-cooked for hours with white pepper and a blend of Chinese herbs. The pig’s stomach acts as a sealed vessel, trapping the chicken’s juices and the pepper’s heat within a single enclosed environment. The resulting broth is peppery and deeply savoury, while the chicken inside remains tender and lightly sweet. The pig’s stomach itself takes on a clean, soft texture without any gamey quality. It is the kind of soup that reads as familiar — pepper chicken is common across Singapore’s kopitiam circuit — but the preparation method here is distinctly its own.

Soy Bean and Egg Steamed Fish — from $7/100g

Among the restaurant’s four declared signatures, the steamed fish is the most quietly accomplished. Red grouper is sliced and deboned before being arranged for steaming, then covered in a housemade mixture of soybean sauce, egg, and Chinese cooking wine. The egg component sets into a silken layer around the fish during cooking, creating a texture that sits between a steamed egg custard and a conventional steamed fish sauce. The fish itself, benefiting from the restaurant’s live seafood sourcing, is tender and fresh with minimal prep required to let its quality show.

San Lou Burn Bee Hoon — from $12

This is Yang Ming Seafood’s take on the classic zi char wok noodle — rice vermicelli cooked until the base catches and chars against the wok surface, producing a smoky crust that gives way to a moist, yielding interior. The dish is served with prawns, squid, and egg, and the wok hei is pronounced throughout. It functions well as a shared carbohydrate anchor for a larger table spread, and at $12 for a small portion, it represents the more accessible end of the menu.

Prawn Paste Chicken — $15 / $20 / $26

Marinated in fermented prawn paste before deep-frying, the chicken here arrives with a thin, crunchy exterior that gives way to meat that has retained its moisture through the cooking process. The fermented prawn paste permeates the meat during marination, giving the chicken a depth of flavour that goes beyond what a simple fry typically delivers. Available in three sizes, it is one of the restaurant’s more reliably ordered dishes across a wide range of table sizes.

Yang Ming Seafood brings together live premium seafood and classic zi char technique in a format that requires no occasion to justify — just a table, a group, and a pre-order call placed ahead of time for the dishes that need it. The BYOB policy with free corkage extends the flexibility further, allowing diners to pair the food with whatever they prefer without the markups of a licensed establishment. For a restaurant that opened in 2019 in a coffeeshop in Bishan, it has covered considerable ground in a short time.

Address: 150 Bishan Street 11, Singapore 570150
Tel: +65 8028 9940
Opening Hours: 11.30am – 2pm, 4.30pm – 10pm (Mon – Sun)
Website: yangmingseafood.oddle.me/en_SG
Facebook: facebook.com/yangmingseafood.sg
Instagram: @yangmingseafood