Tan Ser Seng’s Third Generation Brought Herbal Soup Into a Singapore Mall

CNA Lifestyle published its feature on Tan Ser Seng on October 24. Little Big Red Dot followed a week later with hours, prices, and how to find the room. In the brand’s 80th year, the Geylang herbal-soup house has opened a second address for the first time, at Great World on Kim Seng Promenade. Allan Tan, 35, and his sister Vivian, 49, run it. Neither planned to take over the soups their grandfather started after the war.

Tan Ah Sai emigrated from Chaoshan as a child and began selling turtle soup with Chinese herbs in 1946, balancing two pots on a bamboo pole for labourers around Lorong Tai Seng. A bowl cost 20 or 30 cents then, his son Tan Khar Seng told CNA. The family settled at 29 Lorong Bachok in 1992. Older regulars and Chinese tourists still fill those tables. The mall is for diners who grew up watching someone else order the bowl.

The kitchen still keeps overnight hours. Stomp reported that Allan’s day starts around 3 a.m. Broths simmer about twelve hours, then double-boil for roughly two more, a timing foodgem and Prestige Online also cite for the chicken soups. The house says more than twenty Chinese herbs go into the pots. Great World’s tenant page names dang gui and red dates in the claypot turtle soup Khar Seng introduced in 1986, after watching a Japanese hotpot programme, and bills it as Singapore’s first individual claypot version. Ginseng black chicken soup, created with his wife Tay Ah Lek the same year, still carries a whole ginseng root. Vivian’s cordyceps Sakura chicken soup came later, for diners who want free-range chicken and a milder herbal taste. Teochew yam rice comes with the soup instead of the fried vermicelli other turtle shops once served.

Allan told Stomp that first-timers should taste the broth before the meat. He describes turtle meat as sweet and collagen-rich, somewhere between chicken, pork, and fish. The kitchen uses farmed freshwater softshell turtles, not wild sea turtles, a point he and CNA both stress because that mix-up still turns younger guests away. Live2makan notes that Singapore’s softshell trade now runs through a single major distributor. House herbal wine goes into some bowls. The family treats the tonic language as tradition, and says it is not medical advice.

The room fills differently by age. CNA writes that generational diners and Chinese tourists already love the brand. Allan told Stomp that older guests care about honest food and shrug at ambience. Younger ones want the flavour and the service, and a bowl that looks right on a phone. At Great World, bright light, ceramic crockery, and electronic menus replace the old-school Geylang room. Little Big Red Dot lists Geylang dine-in prices as a reference: claypot turtle from S$28 small, double-boiled turtle from S$16, ginseng black chicken and cordyceps chicken at S$15 each. The mall has not published a separate sheet. Both shops are walk-in only.

To pull newcomers in, the siblings added plates from their mother’s home cooking: Teochew steamed fish with black olive and preserved mustard greens, and sweet-and-sour pork made with persimmon as a nod to their grandfather’s name. Vivian has taken a TCM course, and later dishes may borrow from that study while the overnight pots stay put. All Singapore Deals noted a first-month pulse-reading partnership with Liang Yi TCM at the new outlet. A first visit can start with chicken soup or a mother’s plate, then move to the long broth if the table wants it.

Around 2000, when Khar Seng’s knees failed and he talked of selling, Vivian left a mechanical-engineering career after her mother called in tears. She and her husband, Derrick Lee, wrote down recipes that had never been on paper. Allan joined later, pushed the shop onto delivery apps and Google reviews, and quarrelled with his father over how far to change a dish. “Just use your heart,” Khar Seng would say, to two engineers who wanted numbered steps. Allan told CNA he understands that line now. Vivian still jokes that their father cooks as if he holds a Michelin star and checks every piece of meat.

Great World sits at #B1-106/107, 1 Kim Seng Promenade, open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. with last order at 9:30. The Geylang shop keeps shorter hours. The herbs still go on before dawn. At the mall, a younger diner can take a first spoonful without waiting for an elder to order the bowl.