Abalone Soup in Kuching: Dave Chang’s Local Bowl at Shi Ding Ji Cafe
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Some dishes arrive with a price assumption attached. At Shi Ding Ji Cafe, Dave Chang’s Abalone Delight starts by challenging it: he wanted abalone to become a satisfying local bowl, not a luxury display, so he built it around noodles and a fuller mix of seafood and meatballs.
Chang’s route to this bowl is part of the dish’s identity. He went to Singapore at 17, entered a kitchen in 2005 and later received formal culinary training there. He developed the soup for his cookbook by working with familiar flavours and local palates. The bowl carries sliced abalone, prawns, fish balls and meatballs, fresh and fried shallots, and a rich broth he continues to refine. I would order it with noodles first; steamed rice makes more sense if you want the broth and toppings to read as a heavier meal.
This is not a one-dish pop-up. Chang says the menu has more than 20 noodle and rice choices, while the abalone soup is the bowl customers have developed a taste for. That tension—an expensive ingredient made into an approachable everyday bowl—explains more about the stall than a generic “signature dish” label does. If you are bringing someone who does not want abalone, Pan Mee gives the table a less celebratory alternative.
Shi Ding Ji Cafe (Dave Chang’s Abalone Delight)
Hua Joo Park, 4th Mile, Kuching, Sarawak
Daily 6am–2pm, except Tuesday
Open Shi Ding Ji Cafe in Google MapsI would plan this as a breakfast-to-lunch stop and order the signature soup with noodles first. It is not a formal abalone banquet; its point is how a cook’s Singapore experience, familiar flavours and carefully adjusted broth fit an ordinary Kuching cafe table.
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