Cai Ji Fishball Noodle – Underrated Stall in Toa Payoh

Toa Payoh has its fair share of delicious eats and we’ve found another spot to add to the list. Heading over at 9:30am on a Tuesday morning, I was expecting the coffee shop to be relatively quiet but boy, was I wrong. Every single table, but one, was occupied by aunties and uncles tucking into the very bowl of deliciousness that brought me all the way here.

While it didn’t have a snaking long queue, there was a constant and steady stream of people waiting to get their hands on this glorious bowl. Evidently, this stall was very popular with the local residents, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on my own. Unlike most fishball noodle places that offer more variety, their menu only has two things — Fishball Noodles(Dry or Soup). You can order the standard bowl which costs $4, or choose to get a smaller or larger portion for $3 and $5 respectively. Despite the slim menu, the stall has been operating since 1967 so they must be doing something right!

There’s only one person manning the entire stall and I was amazed at how he managed to churn out bowl after bowl without stopping. After about a 15-minute wait, we finally received our food. We went with both the soup and dry options, but opted for different noodles in each. For the dry version, we ordered the standard mee pok (flat yellow noodles), and for the soup version, we got a combination of kway teow (flat rice noodles) and yellow noodles.

I was expecting a bowl with the standard fishballs and fishcake, and maybe some minced pork on top, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of ingredients. While it definitely had all the standard accompaniments, there was also a meatball, deep-fried wanton, and even braised mushrooms! I love both fishball noodles and bak chor mee, but my gripe with the former was always the lack of mushrooms that bak chor mee has, so imagine my happiness when this bowl came with it!

I prefer dry noodles to soup noodles so, naturally, I was more inclined towards the dry noodles here. However, the soup was honestly pretty tasty as well. The surprise star of the show, though, was the meatball which looked unassuming but turned out to be really good! It even had bits of water chestnut which gave it a better texture.

While I would have preferred the noodles to be a tad spicier and more vinegar-y, this is definitely worth trying if you’re in the Toa Payoh area.

MissTamChiak.com made anonymous visit and paid its own meal at the stall featured here.