Skip to main content

The State of Chai in America






“The customer is not happy with the chai.” A slightly disheartened Break room attendant told me as she walked away from the Conference room where she was setting up the lunch. The client hosting the meeting had organized an Indian lunch and obviously, Chai was on the menu. This young lady has a great work ethic, always trying to find solutions for her guest’s problems. But this time she was stumped. “I have no idea what to do, Chef. Can you help me?”


This was a tough one. I was there as the Indian Chef Consultant, implementing the new Indian station menu for the company’s employee dining program. All questions related to Indian offerings there end up across my desk. Being Indian, I understand how much this person must be yearning for his afternoon chai fix. Here’s what he’s probably thinking. I just gorged on Naan, Basmati Rice and Butter Chicken for lunch, and am this close to slipping into a food coma. A good chai is what I need to keep unintended loud snores from happening during the afternoon’s presentation. And then he takes a sip of this overly sweet, watered down beige liquid from the coffee urn, and realizes he’s so screwed. A good chai is like a firm handshake. It’s gripping! Weak chai is like a weak handshake. It leaves a sort of WTF feeling, which is why he totally downloaded on the unsuspecting Break Room Attendant.


But what is she going to do? She was instructed to make Chai like every other Break Room attendant across corporate offices in America. Open a bag of powder and dump the contents into hot water. Mix and pour into the urn. It’s a sad reflection of what America understands what chai is, thank you Seattle based Coffee behemoth. Chai in America comes from a mix. The only way to achieve that “Kadak Chai” is to boil the living f%$#k out the tea leaves in a whole milk and water ratio. Depending on how creamy the desired end product is, the ratio varies. Many recipes call for a 50-50 ratio, but I am partial to a 65-35 milk to water split. The spices added while this concoction boils changes the end result greatly. Sometimes it’s a store bought chai masala, sometimes it’s a mixture of whole spices;cloves, cinnamon and black pepper. Sometimes it’s just ginger and green cardamom smacked with the flat end of a kitchen knife. Everyone has their own favorite method. But it takes the extended period of boiling tea leaves to achieve a healthy extraction of tannins. That’s what makes the difference between a truly gripping chai and a pathetic apology for one. A proper Indian chai has to be made in a kitchen on a stove.


I proposed a band-aid fix, and it seemed to do the trick for the time being. I instructed the Break Room attendant to throw in a few teabags of Masala chai into the hot water before adding the required measure of coffee conglomerate chai packet mix. Masala Tea bags were one of the choices offered at the station. It brought some back life into the tea. Even though it was a band aid, it was definitely an improvement. She came by the kitchen later, all beaming and smiling. She received a few compliments for her chai.


For now, it’s the best thing she can do. And it’s going to have to do until the team gets trained on how to make chai the right way.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alphonso: The Undisputed King of Mangoes

  For most desi immigrants, travel to India happens primarily  over the Christmas vacation. The work cycle and demands of the school schedule make winter pretty much the only time to visit family back home. There is one huge drawback to visiting India during this time period. You miss out on feasting on the true king of fruit; the Mango. In India, mangoes come into season Mid April and are available until the end of June. Mangoes are the true indicator that summer has finally arrived. The down side for the Desi who chose to immigrate is having to say goodbye to the pleasure of this summer delight. It was a family emergency that brought me back home at this time of the year. Being my first time visiting India in summer in 24 years, you bet I have a lot of mango catching up to do! Many will argue till blue in the face about which mango variety is the best. The Goans insist it’s the Mankurad variety while the residents of West Bengal swear by the Himsagar. But a true Mumbaikar ca...

A Sindhi Kadhi Experience

  Being the cultural melting pot of a city that it is, Mumbai is known for its opulent and extravagant food scene. However no restaurant can capture the warmth, authenticity and love of a home cooked meal. One of my most cherished memories of my Mumbai trip was a true Sindhi dining experience, thanks to the gracious invitation to dinner by my Sindhi school friend, Deepak Choithramani.  The Sindhi people originally hail from the province of Sindh, an area of great historical significance dating back to the Indus Valley civilization of 2500 BCE which is now in modern day Pakistan. This was a thriving community the country’s Independence in 1947. The partition caused the displacement of hordes of Hindu Sindhis, who were forced to flee to India to avoid persecution, forced conversion and genocide. They settled in many parts of northwestern India, primarily Gujarat and Maharashtra, and started their lives from scratch. In just a few decades of that happening, the Sindhis  esta...

Memories of Mumbai: Ramadan (part 1)

The crescent moon was sighted on April 2, 2022 in Mumbai, kicking off the Holy month of Ramadan. It is conventional Islamic belief that the Quran , the holy muslim text, was revealed to the prophet Mohammed in this month circa 610 AD.  To commemorate this event, for the next 30 days, every able bodied practicing muslim will observe a strict fast, abstaining from food and water from sunrise to sunset. This holiest of months teaches the Muslim people about self discipline, self control, sacrifice and empathy for the less fortunate. Eid is the festival to mark the end of this 30 day period of abstinence, and is celebrated with much pomp and vigor across the Muslim world. Ramadan was always very conflicting for me. Even though my father practiced Islam, I was raised roman catholic, following the religion of my mother. It must have been a sensitive decision because I sensed uneasiness every time I asked why. But as a result, I experienced Islam as an outsider.  I was not obligated ...