Restaurants in Singapore: Bak Kut Teh, Chili Crab & More

Founder Bak Kut Teh

Bah Kut Teh (肉骨茶 or Mandarin: Ròu Gŭ Chá) is  pork rib soup. 肉骨 means Meat Bone while 茶 means tea, despite the soup not having any tea ingredients. Bak Ku Teh is 肉骨茶 in the Hokkien/Teochew dialect of Chinese.

The dish consists of meaty pork ribs simmered in a complex broth of herbs and spices (including star anise, cinnamon, cloves, dan gui, fennel seeds, and garlic). A lot of those herbs have very beneficial digestive properties. 

Founder Bak Kut Teh has been serving Singapore for over 40 years. You may notice the restaurant’s sign featuring the Founder Mr. Chua Chwee Whatt.

Mr. Chua’s secret to the quality of Bak Kut Teh is the insistence in using only the freshest meaty porky ribs using a broth recipe Mr. Chua created himself and perfected over the years.

The price is great and the soup is amazing. It’s not heavy at all and we go to Founder Bak Ku Teh a visit every time we go to Singapore.

Hawker Centre

Locals know that some of the best food come from street vendors. Hawker Centres are known for street food. The term hawker is an older British English term for peddler. What started out as food stalls or carts evolved to be more like food courts. In 2016, a couple of the Singaporean food stands became the first street food vendors to be awarded a Michellin Star for excellence for eating.

We went to Newton Food Centre, one of the many hawker centres in Singapore. One thing I love about Hawker center is that you can order food from different stalls and share family style.

We had chicken wings, stingray, satay, otak-otak, baby octopus, singaporean chili crab, sugar cane juice with lemon and more! It’s true what they say, street food is not only cheaper, it’s better. The chicken wings and satay here was better than the ones found in the malls. If you love crab, I highly recommend Chili Crab and eat it with the bread.

Newton Centre Singapore

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