Yun Nans - The 40-Mushroom Fish Broth You Need to Try

Most Singaporeans know Cantonese, Hokkien, and Sichuan food. Yunnan cuisine? That’s a different story — and Yun Nans (云海肴) is here to tell it. China’s largest casual Yunnan dining chain has quietly become one of the most interesting Chinese restaurant groups in Singapore, introducing diners to a highland food culture shaped by wild forest mushrooms, mountain herbs, and freshwater fish. It’s a regional Chinese culinary tradition that most people outside of Yunnan province have never encountered — and that alone makes it worth the trip.

Poached Seabass in Spicy Pickled Vegetable Broth (老坛酸菜鱼) — $28.90

The dish that best captures what Yun Nans is really about. The suancai yu here bears the hallmarks of the Yunnan version of this classic — the broth is built on a stock made from 40 varieties of dried mushrooms, aged over weeks until the umami is impossibly deep and layered. Two types of specially imported pickled vegetables go into the base: Yunnan mustard greens and pickled chillies, fried together with fresh ground chilli to produce a broth that’s tangy and warming without being one-dimensional. The fish itself gets a split treatment — the head is deep-fried to a crisp before service, while the sliced seabass is gently poached to preserve its clean, silky bite. Soft vermicelli and tofu complete the bowl, soaking up every drop of that broth. Only the freshest fish is used, with a limited number of portions served each day — and no fish carried over to the next. Order it early.

Baked Australian Cream Pumpkin with Salted Egg

This is the dish that tells you Yun Nans isn’t rigidly traditional — and is all the better for it. Australian cream pumpkin, chosen for its dense, naturally sweet flesh, is baked until soft and yielding, then finished with a rich salted egg coating that clings to every curve of the gourd. It’s a crossover dish in the truest sense: Yunnan’s deep tradition of cooking with high-altitude vegetables meets the salted egg obsession that runs through Singaporean food culture. The result is something familiar and foreign at once, sweet and savoury in every mouthful. A dish that clearly wasn’t designed for a Yunnan audience — it was designed for this one.

Steam Pot Chicken Soup — from $9.90

The dish that made Yun Nans famous globally, and the one that puts Yunnan’s food philosophy on full display. The soup is brewed in a handcrafted Jianshui boccaro clay pot — a vessel that’s been designated an intangible cultural heritage of Yunnan — using a specially bred black-footed chicken. No added water. The liquid you see in the pot is entirely drawn from the chicken itself during the steaming process, resulting in a broth of extraordinary clarity and depth. It’s pure, restorative, and unlike any chicken soup most diners will have encountered before. Available as a single portion ($9.90) or a full pot ($30.95), with variations including lily bulb ($34.50) and black garlic ($18.50).

Braised Wild Porcini Mushrooms — $29.90

Wild mushrooms are fundamental to Yunnan cooking, and this dish exists to prove it. Thick-cut porcini are braised low and slow with Yunnan chillies until the mushrooms become deeply savoury and almost meaty in texture. There are no distractions — this is a dish that trusts its star ingredient completely. For anyone unfamiliar with Yunnan cuisine, this is the most direct expression of what the highlands taste like.

Traditional Baked Rose Pastry — $6.90

Yunnan’s food identity isn’t just about mushrooms and broth — it extends to the extraordinary use of edible flowers. The rose pastry is a highland classic: buttery, shattering pastry wrapped around a filling of aromatic rose petal jam. The flavour is floral and gently sweet, with none of the synthetic perfume of artificial rose flavouring. Order it as dessert, or simply order it to understand what Yunnan cooking really is — a cuisine where ingredients from the mountains become something worth celebrating.

Yun Nans is doing something genuinely rare: introducing Singapore to a Chinese regional food culture that most diners here have never had a proper window into. The 40-mushroom suancai yu stock, the highland ingredients flown in directly, the clay pot soup with no water — these aren’t marketing talking points. They’re the evidence of a kitchen that takes Yunnan cuisine seriously. If you’ve ever wondered what lies beyond the Chinese regional cuisines you already know, this is where to start.

Outlets:
∙ Jewel Changi Airport — 78 Airport Boulevard, #02-217, Singapore 819666
∙ Westgate — 3 Gateway Drive, #03-07, Singapore 608532
∙ NEX — 23 Serangoon Central, #03-02, Singapore 556083
∙ VivoCity — 1 Harbourfront Walk, #01-154/155, Singapore 098585
∙ ION Orchard — #B3-17
Operating Hours: Daily, 11:00am – 10:00pm (may vary by outlet)
Contact: +65 6214 0591
Email: [email protected]
Website: yunnans.sg