We’ve had our fair share of fab Chinese-style roast meat, from hipster restaurants to home cooks. But nailing this simple pairing of meat, sauce and rice requires plenty of expertise. And we’re glad to say we've found a new place to enjoy the delicacy in Ayer Rajah Food Centre, a stall cheekily called Te Bak Kia (“pork kid” in Hokkien). The three-month-old stall is run by a millennial couple: 28-year-old Chong Jin Yuan and 27-year-old Gan Jia Jing — serving some of the most value-for-money roast meat we’ve had recently. They also dish out a fast-disappearing Teochew dish: braised pig’s face.

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Jin Yuan is no stranger to the pork biz. His father has been the owner of Chong Butchery at Jurong West 505 Wet Market for the past 30-odd years, and Jin Yuan has been helping out since his polytechnic days.

“Many butchers get their meat already processed in some way, but my dad is very meticulous. He’ll get the whole pig intact, and we’ll have to butcher it ourselves. Over time, I picked up the tricks of the meat trade,” he shares.

After graduating from Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2013 with a Diploma in Automation and Mechatronics systems, Jin Yuan started helping his dad full-time at the butchery. However, starting his own F&B biz was always on his mind. “Back at school, I’d spend my free time at the library reading all kinds of food books, from food science to food culture. That helped to fuel my passion and interest in cooking.”

As working hours at the butchery were odd (the workday typically starts at 10pm and ends around 4am to 5am), Jin Yuan spent the rest of his free time searching for apprenticeships with renowned roast meat “masters”. “I was able to tap into my dad’s business contacts and friends — being thick-skinned and just asking around did the trick,” he adds.

Over the years, he managed to apprentice with three different masters (whom he prefers not to name) — the first in 2014 for sio bak and char siew, the second in 2016 for roast duck, and the third in 2019 for braised pig's face and to refine his char siew cooking technique.

Te Bak Kia isn’t Jin Yuan’s first F&B venture. He set up a business selling wholesale yong tau foo and handmade fishballs with his brother in 2018. However, the biz had to close one-and-a-half years later, due to rental issues.

“It’s actually a nickname that a regular customer at his father’s butchery gave my husband!” laughs Jia Jing. “It means something along the lines of ‘pork seller’s son’. Since it was apt, we decided to go with it.”

Even though Jin Yuan had honed his skills and cooking techniques elsewhere, the recipes at Te Bak Kia are based on those inherited from his paternal grandmother, who passed them to his father (whom Jia Jing describes as an “excellent cook”). Jin Yuan’s family used to own a seafood restaurant in Lim Chu Kang. However, a fire destroyed the restaurant almost 40 years ago — which was why the family pivoted to butchery.

All the cuts at Te Bak Kia are supplied by Chong Butchery every afternoon. The stall sells an average of 100 plates a day and is only open on weekdays.

The married couple had successfully bid for the stall at Ayer Rajah Food Centre in February 2020 and had planned to open in June, but delayed it to October due to the birth of their youngest daughter. The young couple have four adorable kids — aged eight, six, two and seven months.

It’s a pretty hectic schedule, admits Jia Jing, who also has a full-time admin job with a food wholesale company. “We’re barely hanging on!” she quips. “But thankfully, we have a very supportive family who’s ready to jump in whenever we need help.”

After dropping the kids off at student care and childcare, Jia Jing joins Jin Yuan at the stall around 9am to help him. “Her boss has been super supportive by allowing her to start work after lunch,” says Jin Yuan. He’s at his stall at 4am each day to start cooking the meats. After it closes around 2pm, he’ll stay back to prep the meats for the next day, which are left to marinate overnight.

Jin Yuan still helps his dad at the butcher’s stall part-time on Fridays and Saturdays as well — heading to the shop to start deboning the fresh pork at 10pm. He ends work at around 4am on those days, an hour or so before the butchery opens for business.

“I’m quite used to this (pattern of irregular sleeping hours). After all, I’ve been doing this for years!” says Jin Yuan. As a result, he suffers from chronic migraines that flare up from time to time. However, he regards it as a trade-off for doing what he loves and for his ageing father, who needs help coping with the heavy workload.

The menu is streamlined, offering the “three treasures” of sio bak, char siew and braised duck, as well as a rather niche speciality — braised pig’s face. Prices are pretty reasonable, starting at $3.50 for a plate of rice with one choice of meat, $5 for two choices of meat and $6.50 for all three choices. A braised egg can be added for 70 cents. In comparison, a plate of char siew rice and sio bak rice at famous rival stalls Kim Heng and 88 Hong Kong Roast Meat cost $6.80 and $6 respectively.

“I actually get my meat from my father at market price — business is business,” says Jin Yuan. “The reason why we intentionally keep our prices low is because we want to serve the blue-collar workers in our area.”

As a result, profit margins are slim — but Jin Yuan has factored that into his future plans. “This current stall is sort of a test bed for me, since we’re just starting out. We hope to move to a more central location eventually if things go well.”

All the meats are roasted in an Apollo oven (a gas-fired oven shaped like a space capsule) — in which thick slabs of meat are hung to cook over dry heat — so that they achieve a crisp exterior. Jia Yuen decided to only serve rice with their roast meat and to keep his menu small, as he wanted to focus on maintaining the quality of his dishes — even down to the rice. “We make sure every pot of rice is cooked just right, so that the grains are separate and al dente,” says Jia Jing.

Rather than serving the typical sticky-sweet dark sauce with their meats, Te Bak Kia makes a sauce from the leftover herbal braising liquid from the Teochew-style Braised Pig Face. “Due to all the herbs and spices, not many hawkers do this type of Teochew braise now, as it can be quite costly,” says Jin Yuan.

The braising sauce contains about 12 different spices, from cinnamon to candlenut. Due to the fragrant spices and the lack of hoisin sauce, it turns out much brighter and more complex than the usual saccharine stickier version (which tends to overwhelm). Very complementary with the rich meats.

For us, the perfect piece of char siew must tick three boxes: the right ratio of fat to lean meat (it can’t be too lean or too fatty), a balance of sweet and savoury flavors, and just enough char around the edges. Just based on its appearance alone, Te Bak Kia’s char siew looks good. The layers of glistening fat within the meat are visible, surrounded by a thin ring of dark red glaze.

Jin Yuan only uses the bu jian tian (“never sees the sky” in Mandarin) cut of meat, taken from the underarm of the pig, prized for its tenderness and balanced fat-to-lean meat ratio. “I’ve spent the past five years trying to improve my char siew. My family has probably eaten it every week for the past two-plus years!” exclaims Jin Yuan. “I chose to control the level of char on the meat as well — even though [well-burnished char siew] looks good, the natural sweetness of the meat will be overwhelmed if there’s too much bitterness.”

Each piece holds up well without falling apart when picked up, but it melts away on the tongue after a couple of bites. The meat itself is sweet with just the right level of smoky char, and pairs wonderfully with the earthy sauce, fluffy rice and a dab of punchy garlic chilli. Yum.

We’re picky about our sio bak as well, but this one hits the spot. Each piece of pork belly is fork-tender, with a golden crackling that’s sturdy yet shatteringly crisp. ASMR-worthy. The layers of lean meat and fat are distinct and melty as well.

We tried this tabao-ed too, and surprisingly, the crackling stays slightly crunchy even two hours later. According to Jia Jing, her husband has been working on “extending” the crispiness of their sio bak beyond two to three hours, since quite a few customers like to take it away for dinner. “That’s one reason why I’m proud of my husband: that he never wants to stop improving.”

As with the char siew, we love dipping this in the bright garlic-spiked chilli sauce, which helps cut the sinfulness of each piece. Shiok.

“I used to eat braised pig’s face with rice every other day when I was young,” says Jin Yuen. He describes how his father used to tapow the dish from a particular stall in Chinatown for him, until he was old enough to buy it himself. In 2019, Jin Yuen went back to that same master and convinced him to share the recipe with him. “It’s a flavour from my childhood. That’s why I wanted to bring this dish back to the hawker centre.”

We’ve never had braised pig’s face before, so this was a novel experience. Each serving has a mix of lean meat, skin and gelatinous fat, braised till dark in a herbal sauce.

Despite the scary-sounding name, the dish is pretty pleasant — the lean parts taste like lor bak (Teochew braised pork), while the rest takes on the unctuous texture of braised pig skin. Surprisingly, there’s barely any hint of gaminess in the braised, erm, face, thanks to the herbal sauce.

Jia Yuen cooks his roast duck low and slow, a technique used to prevent the dark duck meat from tasting gamey, even after being left for a day. “A lot of our customers like to takeaway our food back for dinner, so we wanted the [fresh] flavour of our duck to be maintained.” Each slice is covered in glistening skin, and is sufficiently juicy. The sio bak and char siew are more impressive, though.

Good sio bak and even better char siew (skip the duck) at affordable prices. We can taste the effort that this hardworking young couple puts into each detail — from the special herbal sauce to the preparation of each cut of meat. Worth a visit.

Photos: Kelvin Chia

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