The 5 best things I ate in Singapore — #5: Fish Meat Bee Hoon

In this bi-weekly series, I usually round up the five best things I ate in a particular city or country. 

However, I lived in Singapore for over a year — meaning my top five favorite places are also my locals. I’ve shared these meals multiple times with friends and family; over these bowls of soup or baskets of xiaolongbao, some of my most treasured Singapore memories were formed. 

These five dishes / places mean so much to me and therefore I feel deserve more than just a passing mention in one round-up post. So I’ve decided to devote a little more space to each one and write about the top five individually.

#5: Fish Meat Bee Hoon (Yu Rou Mi Fen/鱼肉米粉) — Jin Hua Fish Head Bee Hoon

There’s a rule of thumb when visiting hawker centers in Singapore: the longer the line, the better the food. Singaporeans know what’s what and are not afraid to queue for quality.

Jin Hua Fish Head Bee Hoon is one such place — even at 11 in the morning, you’ll find people forming a line for one of their famous bowls of fish soup.

I used to both work and live just five minutes down the road from Maxwell Centre, so their number 2 — the fish meat bee hoon — became a staple of my Singapore lunch routine. Bee hoon means rice vermicelli noodles (mi fen in Mandarin Chinese); here they’re cooked al dente then topped with fish slices, along with a few pieces of veg, ginger, and crispy onions. The fish is lightly fried, but you wouldn’t be able to tell — it soaks up the soup beautifully and has a perfectly flaky texture.

But what really makes Jin Hua stand out from every other fish noodle soup out there?

The broth. It’s…milky.