I was in the Woodlands area when a familiar name caught my eye: Yan Ji seafood soup.

Back in the day, my favourite seafood soup stall was at Old Airport Road Food Centre — and it was also called Yan Ji. So of course I had to stop. Same stall? Same soup? Would it taste the way I remembered?

Some dishes you eat for the ingredients. Seafood soup, for me, has always been about the soup. The prawns and fish are nice, sure, but what I really want is to tip the bowl back and drink that broth to the last drop. Let’s see if Yan Ji seafood soup at Marsiling still delivers on that.

Is This the Same Yan Ji from Old Airport Road?

Short answer: sort of. It’s a little complicated.

The Marsiling stall is the original. Yan Ji started out in the 1980s at the old Woodlands Centre food centre (the signboard proudly says “Since 1980’s, original in Singapore”) and moved into Marsiling Mall when the old centre made way for redevelopment. It’s now run by the second generation.

The Yan Ji I remember at Old Airport Road was a franchise of this Marsiling original. That stall later rebranded as O.A.R Seafood Soup — which explains why I could never find “Yan Ji” there again. Then in June 2023, Yan Ji opened its own new outlet at Old Airport Road.

So the bowl I loved back then and the bowl in front of me now share the same family recipe, even if they weren’t cooked by the same hands. And one sip in, I could tell — more on that below.

The Queue (Or Lack Of It)

I reached around 2:30pm on a Wednesday, expecting at least a short line for a stall with this much history.

Queue when I came was… no queue. Zero. I walked up, ordered and that was it.

To be fair, 2:30pm on a weekday is the dead zone between lunch and dinner, so I wouldn’t read too much into it. If you’re coming for a weekend lunch, your mileage may vary. But if you have flexible hours, mid-afternoon on a weekday seems like a safe bet.