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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.

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