Mellben Seafood

Chilli crab is one of the Singapore's signature dishes. However, it is not at the top of my list. I generally prefer butter crab and creamy salty egg crab. There are a couple hawker centers that serve pretty nice crab dishes. Mellben Seafood coffee shop is one of them. My cousin sister came down for visiting yesterday. I took her to Mellben for dinner.

We arrived at 6.10 pm and there was already a line growing. Fortunately, we were at the front of the Q. So, we were seated rather quickly.

The signature crab dish of Mellben is actually their claypot rice noodle crab. However, as I said, I prefer butter crab. So, we ordered the latter.

Creamy Butter Crab: SGD 34

Fried 'Man Tou': SGD 4

The butter crab tasted quite delicious. It was slighty fried before sauteed in its creamy butter sauce. Very fragrant indeed. The fried 'man tou's went extremely well with the thick butter sauce =)). However, I was rather dissapointed because they were not crispy enough. Most slighty because they had been prepared a while ago before serving.

Yam Ring: SGD 18


Yam ring is one of my cousin's fav dishes. So, we ordered that too. I absolutely love it. Notice that there were plenty of fried pork slices, cashew nuts and turnips in it. The outer yam ring was pretty crispy too. Hhhm...yummy.

Stir Fry Mix Vegetables with Fresh Scallops and Lotus Petals: SGD 16

I love lotus flower petal, particularly when it is stir-fried with other sugar rich vegetables. However, this dish was a little dissappointing. The scallops were not as flavorful. It will be better if some macademia nuts were added in. And, I felt that this dish was slightly over priced.

Sambal Kang Kong: SGD 6

The best way to eat kang kong is of course to stir fry it with sambal. The price was reasonable and the taste was quite good. Recommended!

Fried Vermicelli: SGD 6

We were not very fond of rice generally. So, we ordered noodles instead. This was apparently Mellben's best fried noodles. Two thumbs up for it. The noodle strands were chewy and yet very moist. Lots of eggs, tiny prawns and bean sprouts. Hhhm...absolutely delicious.

On the whole, I felt that Mellben was not as good as its reviews said. Not all the dishes were nice. Some were even over priced. However, I must point out that the outlet was very clean and comfortable (newly renovated I heard). Food was served very quickly also.

Do give it a try if you happen to be some where near Ang Mo Kio. But, be there by 6 pm. Or else, you will have to join the Q with an empty stomach for quite a while.

Mellben Seafood Pte Ltd

Block 232, Ang Mo Kio Ave 3 (Street 22),

#01-1222, Singapore 560 232.

Tel: 6285 6762

Operating hours: 5 pm to 11 pm