Dry Ban Mian (Toa Payoh)

Have you ever had dry ban mian? Neither did we until we chanced upon Toa Payoh Central's famous dry ban mian. Normally with dry meepok or dry meekia you'd expect some combination of the classic chili/vinegar/tomato/dark soy sauce. However, with ban mian, one would probably be curious as to how on earth do you serve it dry. At Fu Zhou Ban Mian (whose signboard just states Ban Mian), for $3.50, what you get is a huge bowl of handmade broad noodles (ban mian), mixed in dark soy sauce. Apart from the crispy ikan bilis, a cracked egg and minced pork, this dish is a vegetarians' delight. It is absolutely loaded to the brim with green leafy vegetable (we think the veges are seasonal. We had cabbage on our second visit)-- trust us the picture doesn't really do it justice.

Be prepared to wait!  We went around dinner time on our second visit and had to wait about 30 - 45 mins for our order to be ready.

Because we had the dry Ban Mian, it came with a very generous portion of soup (with more leafy veges and an egg!) S ordered a dry prawn mee ($3.50) which had lots of kangkong (morning glory) and tau geh (mung beansprouts) -- and as usual, added too much chili powder. Because we are greedy people, we had to order popiah ($1.50) from a nearby stall to complement our meal. It was decent, although there wasn't any fragrant rojak flower that we adore.

This Ban Mian place has hardly any reviews so we thought we'd give it some publicity given that its cheap and good. Block 186 is within walking distance from HDB hub, look out for Courts!