[CLOSED] Yan Ji Seafood Soup (Old Airport Road Food Centre)

It's been a while and this is still good although a tad bit too salty!

Honestly, soup was robust & tasty, but the choice of the ingredients were poor. This was the smallest portion of the seafood soup @ $6. For all the seafood soups, the fish chosen was frozen dory fish, doesn’t fit the soup well. Prawn was fresh and the other ingredients were ok. Ordered a seafood soup but oddly the ingredient that was the biggest part of the soup was the minced meat..... Waited at least 30 minutes for this during the lunchtime crowd & honestly it was a waste of my time. I also requested for the owner to give me extra soup, which he replied positively too. To my dismay, the soup was at HALF of the container. And the container is really small, not the usual kind, more comparable to a slightly bigger tauhuey container. Don’t think it’s worth the $6 starting price.

Might only patronise again if they change their choice of fish & if there’s no queue. If there’s a long queue in front of you, my advice would be don’t bother.

Date of visit: 14 Dec 2018, Fri (1pm)
Dish ordered: Seafood soup (Seen in picture)

Rating: 9/10
Reasons:
1) Fresh seafoods and meat from the looks of it! I didn't try the prawn, but my friend mention it was very good cause he wanted to try it more than I do haha 😆 Dory fish and the meat were both fantastic! No strong fishy and meaty taste in both of them :)

2) Rich, milky and 'concentrated' broth which gave me another reason to skip dry food more often! Not a fan of soupy dishes, but the broth has flavour in each and every sip I take which makes me alter my perspective of what a superb seafood broth should be (And Yan Ji is already etched in my mind and taste). The broth itself makes Yan Ji Seafood as having the 'most perfect broth' in Singapore, although my only wish is that they give more broth 😅

Be prepared to wait pretty long! Waiting time can be more than 30 mins during weekday lunch

Their seafood soup is the most intense I’ve tasted, in a hawker centre or otherwise. It’s concentrated with so much goodness from their specially-prepared stock base, you can barely see anything below its surface.
Into this incredible broth goes soft pieces of fish, large prawns (I had mine substituted with fish maw yesterday as I was too lazy to peel them) and hand-formed meatballs (my favourite) which can only be described as “ugly delicious”. These misshapen lumps are fresh, springy and deeply umami from the use of “ti poh” (the dried sole fish that is used frequently in Teochew cooking). I also think they taste extra shiok dipped in their very own lime-laced chilli sauce.

Our second time after the mind-blowing experience at the original Woodlands stall. Ingredients were still fine but soup was just salty compared to last time. Not sure why there's so much soup now given their philosophy of minimising it to maximise flavour. Did the more soup result in poorer taste?

First time here and I LOVE IT. Very rich soup bursting with umami without being too salty, decent portion of chunky minced meat balls and the seafood ingredients of fish and prawns are fresh, so no wonder the minimum cost of seafood soup is $6, but I think it was worth every. penny.