Singapore-based soup chain The Soup Spoon announced on June 4, 2019 that it had obtained halal certification from MUIS.

Although the announcement was made official on June 4, the soups have been produced in a halal-certified kitchen since October 2016, according to Chef Anna, the founder of Soup Spoon.

In response to Mothership queries, she said:

"Our soups have actually been halal since October 2016 when we moved into our new production kitchen, and our factory has a halal plant licence.

So technically, although The Soup Spoon outlets are not certified halal then (2016), we were already producing soups that are halal-certified."

To obtain halal certification, establishments need to fulfil a set of MUIS requirements, which can take years.

Questions about Soup Spoon being halal-certified have been raised for years:

.@fizalicious Hi Hafizah. Soup Spoon has yet to submit any Halal appln, hence it is not Muis Halal certified.

— halalSG (@halalSG) January 26, 2016

Tweaks to recipes

As the soups used to contain ingredients such as pork and alcohol, changes had to made to the old recipes.

This includes replacing pork bacon with chicken ham in its clam chowder.

Chef Anna elaborated:

"Actually clam chowder was not on the menu for three months as I was not happy with the taste. Eventually, we relaunched it again after we managed to rework the recipe, changing to chicken ham, and changing out the wine to our own special concoction."

It was the same with Soup Spoon's Tokyo chicken stew, which had mirin, sake, and teriyaki sauce.

Chef Anna said:

"Yes, we had to tweak our recipes and recreate the soup base as close as we can."

It is not known what ingredients are used to replace the mirin and sake in the Tokyo Chicken Stew.

Mirin is a type of rice wine similar to sake, but with a lower alcohol content and higher sugar content.

According to the ingredients list on The Soup Spoon website, the Tokyo Chicken Stew now contains light soya sauce and teriyaki sauce.

Customers who asked staff if Soup Spoon soups contained alcohol used to be told the alcohol was cooked off under high heat to only retain the flavour.

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Top photo collage from The Soup Spoon