Imagine you are a businessman selling a great product and your future generations take over it, keeping the same standard over the years, isn't that great?
Well that's the story for Xin Lu Margaret Drive Fishball Noodle, they have been selling for 66 years! As mentioned in their stall name, they used to operate on Margaret Drive Hawker Centre.
Now it's led by the 2nd/3rd generation and no longer operating in Margaret Drive. They do have 2 branches currently, 1 is at Mei Ling Market & Food Centre and another will be at Bendemeer Market & Food Centre. I will be visiting the Bendemeer branch.
Bendemeer Market & Food Centre is just 3 mins walking distance from Boon Keng MRT Station and Xin Lu Margaret Drive Fishball Noodle is located near the Centre's toilet.
Take note of the signboard, that's the hint of their fishballs.
The Ordered Dish
Fishball Noodle Dry Version (4.5 SGD)
When this was served to me, it was like instantly transporting back to old-school days. Fishballs and noodles, plain and simple. These are the kind of food that your grandparents would reminisce about.
I chose mee-pok (flat noodles) for the noodles, sprinkled with spring onions and fried shallots. Included with 6 fishballs and a soup.
Noodles are cooked al dente, with no alkaline taste at all. Coated with chilli, pork lard and oil, it gives a simple yet aromatic flavour. They give quite a portion of noodles and the coating sauces are not able to fill up all, resulting in some parts of noodles sticking.
Oh yea the chilli is quite fragrant too, which is old school and hard to find nowadays.
The fishballs here are bigger than you usually see and handmade in-store freshly. The fishes they use to make fishballs are a combination of yellowtail and saito (wolf herring), which are common types of fish to use but not combined both.
They are very bouncy and probably can be used as ping-pong balls. Although the texture was excellent, taste wise a bit lacking like not much seasoning. Soup is sweet to clear your palate from the noodles.
Thoughts
Xin Lu Margaret Drive Fishball Noodle's style of their dish fits my palate. They kept their dish simple and delicious with no extra gimmicks. they're a taste of history
Noodles are cooked beautifully, but sauces need to put more as some parts are dry when eating. Fishballs taste bland but the texture holds it very well that you can sense it is their uniqueness. Soup is sweet to match the fishballs.
if you like the old-school vibe of food and ever find yourself in Boon Keng, make sure to
drop by and have some fishball noodles.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 forks
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