Supping Bak Kut Teh

There's nothing quite like the Singapore tradition of adjourning for a late night supper. Tropical evenings are the perfect temperature for a stroll out to the nearest coffee shop after aikido practice and we're all tired and hungry. So four guys and I from class late one Friday evening decided that a bowl of soup would really hit the spot and we went in search of the bak kut teh (pork bone herbal soup) down Balestier Road.

Balestier Road in Singapore is one of those roads with a lot of mixed use development ranging from old to new commercial buildings. There are some lovely shophouse blocks which must have been built over 70 years ago (and in Singapore this qualifies as old) with their white decorative facades. Surrounding them are blocks of apartments built anytime between the early 1970s and beyond. It's a higgledy piggledy mixture of buildings with a bunch of little restaurants thrown in and the hill rising up on one side of the road and a pile of cars parked on one side or the other forcing the traffic to slow down considerably as cars pull in and out into the flow of traffic.

Me, being me, insisted in trying to find the "best" bak kut teh (pork bone soup) stall down the road, which meant we trekked from the car park near Mandalay Road all the way along Balestier until we found it, with me striding along, hungry but determined and a fellow aikidoka keeping stride beside me and the rest trailing in a more desultory fashion behind. Unfortunately, this one bak kut teh place is so popular, there was a line of people outside and at this my determination melted away since I loathe queues for food. So much for being able to try the Malaysian bak kut teh again which had me drooling for more the last time I went.

So I settled for the more traditional Singaporean version of bak kut teh which has a clear soup and a peppery taste in a shop house that still had the green tiles running up to halfway up the wall, and the very high ceilings for good air circulation, built in an era without airconditioning and the mosaic tiles on the floor. We ate our way through bowls of bak kut teh (pork bone soup cooked with herbs including pepper), white rice, pigs trotters, intestines and kiam chye (preserved green vegetables).

Much to one of my friend's delight, it was an old fashioned enough place to have a little charcoal brazier at each table ready to fire up a little earthern teapot with a bright pink packet of tea next to it. The tea is served in absolutely tiny teacups only slightly bigger than a thimble and one is to down the tea within a minute or two of it being poured. It's bitterness cleanses the palate and is supposed to help clear the cholesterol-laden meal we had just inflcted on our stomachs.

So there we sat, whiling the evening away and our tiredness melting away with each mouthful of food we ate and bowl of soup we drank. The harsher sounds of kitchen clatter and the gutteral Chinese dialects bounced off the walls and I was happy that evening.