Um Yong Baek

Four pork soups at lunch, a charcoal grill at night, and no outlet in the west, whatever the search bar suggests.

Um Yong Baek is the answer to most searches for Busan pork soup in Singapore: a Korean restaurant that serves dwaeji gukbap, pork and rice soup, at lunch and turns into a Jeju-style pork barbecue at night. It suits a solo lunch in the CBD or a booked dinner for three or four. The compromise is the split menu: the soup stops at 3pm, and nothing is sold for takeaway. All three outlets are in town; there is no branch in Jurong West, or anywhere else in the west.

What it is

The original is the shophouse at 27 Boon Tat Street; the nearest MRT station is Telok Ayer. The second outlet is round the corner at 80–82 Telok Ayer Street and the third is at Suntec City, #01-641. All three keep the same hours: soup from 11am to 3.30pm, last order 3pm, then barbecue from 5.30pm to 10pm, last order 9pm. The restaurant's site does not say which days each outlet opens, so check the booking page for your date.

What to order

Lunch is four soups, each S$22 before service charge and GST. The two house bowls are the Clear, a light broth the restaurant says is made from aged pork, and the Thick, a milky one made from bones. The Local Busan is thick-sliced boiled pork in the clear broth; the Local Miryang puts the same pork in the thick one. Order the Busan if that is what you searched for, and add cold sliced pork (naeng sooyuk) for S$5.

At dinner the set for two is S$84 for 470g of pork collar, belly and jowl; the set for three is S$125 for 700g. The Jeju part is the dip: meljorim, a sauce made with fresh anchovies, is S$7 extra and is the reason to choose this grill over the next one.

Why it matters

This is a restaurant that builds a whole lunch service on one Busan dish and offers it four ways, split by broth and by region, which is how you tell a specialist from a menu with soup on it. With 10 per cent service charge and 9 per cent GST a bowl comes to about S$26: dear for soup, fair for the CBD.

Our advice

Go for the soup on a weekday and aim for after 1.30pm, once the office lunch hour is over. Book dinner instead of walking in: the restaurant takes reservations online and runs a separate remote queue for each outlet. Coming from Jurong, the nearest station to the Boon Tat Street and Telok Ayer Street outlets is Telok Ayer, on the Downtown Line; for Suntec City it is Promenade. (You will smell of barbecue after dinner. This is not a complaint.)

Good to know Three outlets: 27 Boon Tat Street #01 (069623), 80–82 Telok Ayer Street #01 (048466) and Suntec City, 3 Temasek Boulevard #01-641 (038983). There is no Jurong outlet. Soup is lunch only and barbecue dinner only; nothing is sold for takeaway. Prices are before 10% service charge and 9% GST. Opening days are not stated on the restaurant's site; the booking page shows available dates. Details from Um Yong Baek's own site, checked 13 Nov 2026.

Um Yong Baek | 27 Boon Tat Street, #01, Singapore 069623 | Nearest MRT: Telok Ayer