Ding Ji Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle : Average, not Recommended

The hype of this particular Mushroom Minced Meat Noodle started when a particular blogger claimed that she has found a very good Bak Chor Mee with Fish Maw Soup and excellent noodles. Though taste is very much subjective but making such a claim after tasting it for just once can be quite irresponsible. There were many negative comments left at her post, a particular comment stated, 'Wake up people. Fei Xiong has 11 brands and 107 outlets islandwide. Ding Ji is one of its brands. Ding Ji alone has 39 outlets. Many of those outlets are manned by foreigners. Quality of food ranges from average to bad. It is pure soul-less food. Large F & B group wins a stall, bulk purchase to keep prices low, hire cheap foreigners to keep profits high, run 24-hours to maximise cost of rental, poor training and quality control and you get varying qualities of food and service. As a foodie, i will never recommend anything from Fei Xiong. Not even if i am paid to do so.'

Back to that blogger, she claimed 'the rich soup base is simmered overnight to get all the goodness from the pork bones. There is generous amounts of sliced pork, pork liver, dried sole fish (teepo), a spoonful of minced meat and egg served in the aromatic soup, with springy noodles tossed in chilli sauce. The fish maw they use are of better quality so you won't get that oily smell like those cheapo ones.'

Apparently, it did not taste like it when i was there on a Saturday.

There was just a few people lining up in front of the stall. There was 2 queues actually, one is for ordering and other is for collecting it. I decided to go with their set 5 which consists of a bowl of fish maw soup with noodles for $8.00. As i observed, the ingredients were already pre-cooked to cut short their cooking time, they just added in to the pot of soup and boiled it for a bit, then served. That, somewhat explained why the soup was not as flavorful. The fish maw soup consists of ingredients like a few pieces of fish maw, meatball, fishball, sliced meat and a teochew dumpling. The bowl of noodles was served with a handful of braised mushroom.

I started by comparing it to Seng Kee Mushroom Minced Pork Noodles at Serangoon Garden Food Centre as they do serve Fish Maw Soup with noodles at $9.00, which is slightly more expansive as the same set is $1 lesser at Ding Ji with more ingredients given.

The soup lacked depth of flavor, in fact, it was quite bland. I could taste a great amount of MSG added as i was left feeling thirsty later on. Every mouthful is not bursting with umami flavor like just how that blogger described it. They probably use a better grade of fish maw as it was more dense and no rancid taste i the soup. Pig liver was done well and the teochew dumpling was not too bad though i could not say the same about the meatball and fishball.

Do try if you happen to be in vicinity else not worth the effort to travel all the way there, and worst, not worth queuing at all. So, who does it better if i am going to compare? Without a doubt, I would definitely go back to Seng Kee, and paying that $1 extra to have a more satisfying option is just worth it.

DING JI MUSHROOM MINCED MEAT NOODLE

Block 284 Bishan Street 22 SINGAPORE 570284

Operating Hours: 24 Hours