Yang Ming Seafood Review: Popular Zi Char Eatery With Lobster Chee Cheong Fun And Crab Pao Fan

Yang Ming Seafood has lobster CCF and crab pao fan in Ubi

Image credit: 扬名海鲜 Yang Ming Seafood

In conversations about the best place to have seafood in Singapore, Yang Ming Seafood is a name that often crops up. Its two branches in Bishan and Ubi are known for their fresh live seafood, as well as their unique zi char dishes, such as the famous Andrew Lobster that makes use of chee cheong fun—but more on that later.

We were recently invited to try some of the restaurant’s signature dishes, along with some new outlet exclusives, at the Ubi outlet located within Excalibur Centre.

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Food at Yang Ming Seafood

We’ll start with the restaurant’s claim to fame, the Andrew Lobster (from $108). You can choose between the Boston and Australian varieties of the crustacean—here we were served meaty Boston lobsters fresh out of the tank.

We could tell how fresh almost immediately upon biting into its flesh. It was firm yet tender, with a sweet, clean, and briny taste. Best of all, its natural juices melded superbly with the house-made sauce, which had plenty of umami and hints of garlicky flavour.

The element that makes this dish fascinating is, of course, the presence of chee cheong fun. These rice roll sheets soaked up all the goodness of the house-made sauce, making them plenty moreish on their own. But even more crucial was its silky texture, which added some textural variety to the dish.

Chee cheong fun was used creatively in another crustacean dish, the Golden Gravy Crab CCF (from $95/kg). Fresh Sri Lankan crabs are doused in a golden pumpkin-based gravy and paired with rice rolls.

While the crab here was just as fresh and juicy as the previous lobster dish, I have to say that it fared worse in the gravy and chee cheong fun department. The pumpkin gravy tasted bland and watered down, and did not elevate the flavours of the crab in any meaningful way. And for some reason, the chee cheong fun had a thicker, more unpleasant texture here.

The last dish we tried that made interesting use of chee cheong fun was the Chao Tah Pig Trotter CCF ($25). If you’re wondering why it looks like chao ta bee hoon, that’s because the Malaysian zi char classic was the chief inspiration. Rice sheets and eggs were fried till crispy on the outside, yet with some silkiness still on the inside. This dish was plenty flavourful thanks to the impressive wok hei, but strangely the pig trotter bits in the dish had such a weak presence that we forgot it was supposedly a key component of the dish.

We did not expect the Steamed Baby Sotong (from $20) to be one of our favourite dishes at the tasting, but it absolutely was. It seemed that the little pieces of squid here were steamed to perfection, for they were tender, soft, and not rubbery in the slightest. The savoury soy sauce, fried garlic bits, and ginger slices also gave it plenty of flavour.

We ended our meal with the heartiest dish of the lot, the Umami Crab Seafood Paofan ($138). Crispy pao fan was cooked in a stock made with prawns and crab, and the result was a wonderfully savoury and sweet soupy dish.

Like the other live seafood we tried, the crabs and prawns that were present in the dish were fresh and plump. However, we felt that the crab was a tad overcooked, as they weren’t as juicy and sweet as they were in the previous crab dish.

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Ambience at Yang Ming Seafood

Yang Ming Seafood’s Ubi outlet has both an outdoor and indoor dining area. The indoor one is, as you’d expect, the more comfortable of the two, with air conditioning and a more quiet, comforting atmosphere. Seats in this area are limited, so do give the restaurant a call before you drop by for your seafood feast.

The restaurant is a seven-minute walk from Ubi MRT Station.

The verdict

You can definitely expect fresh and moreish seafood from Yang Ming Seafood. While some of the new outlet-exclusive dishes had noticeable flaws, we nonetheless had a good meal here. Fans of zi char should similarly have a pleasant experience at this restaurant.

For a seafood restaurant with marinated crab and raw prawns in Outram, read our Da Niu Teochew Seafood Restaurant review. For crayfish seafood soup in Bedok, read our An An Shan Shan Seafood Soup review.

Address: 71 Ubi Crescent, #01-05, Excalibur Centre, Singapore 408571
Opening hours: Tue-Sat 11am to 2:30pm, 4:30pm to 10:30pm, Sun-Mon 11am to 2pm, 4:30pm to 10:30pm
Tel: 8028 2230
Website
Yang Ming Seafood is not a halal-certified eatery.

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Photos taken by Kaedynce Chew.
This was a media tasting at Yang Ming Seafood.