Named after founder Ng Siak Hai’s nickname, Ng Ah Sio serves up its signature peppery Teochew-style pork ribs soup made from the same recipe that dates back all the way to the 1950s when Ng’s father started selling bak kut teh from a streetside cart in the present-day River Valley and Hill Street vicinity.
“I was still a very young child back then, but I remember that bak kut teh was only 80 cents a bowl and the fried you tiao were short fritters, unlike the long ones we have today,” he says. He recalls seeing his father wake up at 5am every day to cook the bak kut teh. “He only prepared about 20 jin (12kg) of pork ribs a day. It sold out very quickly — we often had customers who complained that they had made wasted trips as we no longer had any left when they came to dine.”
Growing up in a Teochew household, Ng was raised on a diet of simple Teochew dishes, light, nourishing soups, steamed fish and his father’s bak kut teh. Bak kut teh, which translates directly to “meat bone tea”, is a rich soup brewed from pork ribs and cloves of old garlic and other aromatics. While there are several varieties of this soup, the Teochew style stands out for its lighter coloured base and peppery kick, eaten with steamed rice and fried dough fritters, and usually accompanied with a strong brew of Chinese tea to cut through the richness of the broth.
Michelin Standard