Bang Bang Mushroom Bak Chor Mee: 27-year-old stall dishing out bowls of minced meat, fishball & pig trotter noodles
It’s been ages since I featured bak chor mee. For all BCM lovers out there, don’t you agree that the combination of noods, minced meat, pork lard, fish cakes, pork slices, black vinegar, and chilli is simply divine? That being said, I’ve heard a number of netizens mentioning great things about Bang Bang Mushroom Bak Chor Mee.
And since I was craving for a bowl, why not check out a stall that I’ve never patronised before, right? At 9.45am, Geylang Bahru Market & Food Centre was already packed with people enjoying their breakfast. If I didn’t take a look at my watch, I’d have assumed it was lunchtime.
The stall has been running for the past 27 years and used to be manned by an elderly couple. These days, the uncle has taken a step back and allows his son to fully take over the reins of the kitchen, while his wife continues to take orders and serve the noodles.
As with any other bak chor mee place, you’ll be asked for your preferred type of noodle, and whether you would like chilli and vinegar to go along.
What I tried at Bang Bang Mushroom Bak Chor Mee
For a stall that has ‘mushroom bak chor mee‘ etched in its name, I had to start off with a small bowl of Minced Meat Noodle for S$4 (naturally). My bowl of mee pok was topped with pork slices, clusters of minced pork, 1 piece of herh kiao (fish dumpling), slices of black mushroom and pieces of fish cake, then garnished with lettuce and spring onions.
I began to intermingle the concealed vinegar-chilli concoction at the bottom with all the elements of the dish. The colour and thickness of the gravy weren’t strong enough, causing all the ingredients to take on only a pale-red hue.
Preparing myself for the unavoidable alkalinity of the mee pok to grace my taste buds, I was pleasantly surprised that I got none of that. Perhaps that was why I spotted the guy rinsing the noodles in cold water after blanching them; that must be the trick!
The noodles, though well-seasoned with the tang of the vinegar and savoury sauce, were unfortunately slightly overcooked in my opinion— I was missing that slight al dente texture that gives it a nice bite. I also wished that the chilli was more pronounced, as the entire bowl of mee lacked oomph.
The woodsy notes of the mushrooms added a nice burst of flavour, while the pieces of fish cake were soft and enjoyable. I felt that while the pork slices were a tad tough for my liking, I thoroughly enjoyed the minced pork.
With a lukewarm response to the first dish, I was hoping for a better experience with the Meat Ball Noodle soup (S$4 for small). The bowl of noodles was fuss-free and unpretentious. It was a no-frills bowl of bee hoon with 7 meatballs, steeped in a clear soup.
I wanted to use the phrase, “don’t judge a book by its cover.” But sadly, upon taking the first sip of broth, it tasted exactly as it looked: bland and like plain water, without a hint of anything from the encyclopaedia of ingredients.
Slurping the bee hoon didn’t improve the situation either— it was as if I had lost my sense of taste due to a bad flu.
The meatballs were decent but lacked the robust flavour that would have made them stand out. Although I made every effort to identify the benefits of this dish, the drawbacks were unfortunately too great.
To make the dish more palatable, I had to rely on the soy sauce-chilli padi combo to give the dish a more savoury and spicy kick.
I was about to find out if the final dish, the Fish Ball Minced Meat Noodle (S$4) would be the saving grace of my lacklustre morning. The dish consisted of mee kia, a trio of fishballs, 1 fish dumpling, black mushroom slices and fishcake.
Similar to the Minced Meat Noodle, the entire bowl of mee changed into a light reddish tone upon tossing all of the ingredients. Unlike the mee pok earlier, the mee kia possessed the perfect texture. The individual strands were nicely seasoned and didn’t clump together, even after sitting on the table for a while.
The fishballs were delicious and delightfully bouncy, like a spring mattress— they were my favourite part of the dish.
Even though there were just 2 pieces of pork lard in the bowl, I spent a brief moment in umami paradise as the tiny but mighty golden nuggets released their sinful goodness throughout my palate— yums!
Final thoughts
Sadly, despite several positive comments praising the noodles from Bang Bang Mushroom Bak Chor Mee, my experience that morning was quite the opposite.
Perhaps it was just a bad day or something went wrong during the cooking process, but whatever the reason, I would like to patronise them again in the near future and give them another shot.
Have any of you visited the stall recently? What are your thoughts on what I’ve just shared? Do let me know.
Expected damage: S$4 – S$6 per pax
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