Local Drinks and How Their Names Came About

The chocolate malt beverage with skimmed milk is fondly called “tak kiu”, which means “kick ball” in the Hokkien dialect, by many local stallholders. The nickname arose from the soccer player image on the original Milo tins. Although many different types of athletes are now promoted on Milo products, Singaporeans craving for this all-time favourite drink can still use the nickname when ordering at local coffeeshops and food courts.

If you enjoy dark lager, then a good old bottle of Guinness would do the trick. The alcoholic beverage is also called ‘Black Dog’ or ‘Orh Gao’ and sometimes ‘Red Tongued Dog’ or ‘Ang Ji Gao’ in Singapore, because old Guinness bottle labels portrayed a black dog with a red tongue, the mascot of the local Guinness stout distributor. So much so that in 2018, Singapore celebrated the Lunar New Year of the Dog by selling Guinness beer with the Black Dog packaging.

While the names of Teh Cino and Kopi Cino seem to be inspired by the Italian beverage Cappucino, their method of preparation is not exactly similar to the latter. The difference is that for Cappucino, espresso coffee is added first as the bottom layer before the top layers of steamed and foamed milk, whereas for Kopi Cino and Teh Cino, hot condensed milk and water is poured first into the cup before coffee or tea is added carefully. In fact, the appearance of having two layers – milk at the bottom and teh or coffee on top – makes Teh Cino and Kopi Cino more similar to the beverage Macchiato. The one thing that Cappucino, Teh Cino and Kopi Cino may have in common is the relatively large proportion of frothy foamed milk used. In the case of our local drinks, hot milk is “pulled” like Teh Tarik from tin mugs to create the foamed milk.