The Strong Cup: Kadak Chai, From India to the Gulf and Back

A regular and his strong cup

There is a customer who comes into our shop on South Avenue and asks for the same thing almost every time: kadak chai. It isn't on our menu. It never has been.

The first time he asked, I knew the word. In India, kadak means strong, and a kadak chai is one that has been allowed to go a little further than usual. It is darker and thicker, with enough bite to stand up to the milk. So we did the obvious thing. We made our chai and let it boil longer, until it turned the color of strong coffee with cream. He seemed happy. He kept coming back.

What stayed with me was where he comes from. He has Turkish roots, and Turkey has a tea culture of its own: a two-tiered pot, small tulip-shaped glasses, tea served deep red and without milk. Karak is not part of that tradition. So how did he know it? I tucked the question away and didn't think much more about it until this trip.

A sign at Mumbai airport

I'm in India right now. Walking through Mumbai airport, I passed a kiosk with a big sign that read Kadak Chai. I stopped, and ordered for one but sadly they were out of it. 

Mumbai, like any Indian city runs on tea, but its signature cup has always been cutting chai. More on that below. So I did a little reading, and it turns out karak has a different home. Its heartland is the Gulf: the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The tea traveled there with the workers from South Asian countries who have built and staffed those cities for the last half century. They carried the kadak chai of home with them, and over time it became a local habit in its own right. Today it is sold from small cafeterias and roadside stalls, often handed through a car window in a little paper cup. Plenty of people drink several a day.

Seen that way, the sign made sense. Mumbai's airport is one of the busiest gateways between India and the Gulf, and many travelers passing through know kadak as the tea of Dubai or Doha as much as the tea of home. A cup that left South Asia had come back with a new name.

How to make karak chai

Kadak is less a spiced tea than a strong, creamy one. Cardamom carries the flavor, and evaporated milk gives it the rich, slightly toffee-like body it's known for. The leaf matters: a strong CTC Assam holds up to long boiling far better than whole leaf. Our Assam Bold CTC is the one we'd reach for.

Makes two small cups

• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons strong black tea, ideally CTC Assam
• 4 to 5 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
• A pinch of saffron or a thin slice of fresh ginger (optional)
• 2 to 3 teaspoons sugar, or to taste
• ¾ cup unsweetened evaporated milk

Method

1. Bring the water and cardamom (and saffron or ginger, if using) to a boil in a small pot. Simmer for 2 minutes.
2. Add the tea and let it boil hard for 3 to 4 minutes, until the liquid is very dark.
3. Stir in the sugar and evaporated milk. Bring it back to a boil and watch closely. When it rises toward the rim, lower the heat and let it settle, then bring it up again. Do this two or three times.
4. Simmer for another 3 to 5 minutes, until the chai turns a deep caramel color and coats the spoon.
5. Strain into small cups and drink it hot.

Street versions are often much sweeter than this, so add sugar to your own taste. If you have no evaporated milk, it seems whole milk simmered a few minutes longer will get you close, though the body will be lighter.

Would we offer it?

The honest answer is that we're not sure.

We have never been fans of sugary, syrupy drinks. Most of what we pour at the counter is meant to let the leaf speak, and kadak is built the other way around: the sugar and the milk are half the point. 

We could make a version with fresh whole milk, reduced slowly, and far less sugar. It might be lovely. But then I'm not sure we could honestly call it kadak. A tea this tied to a place and a way of life deserves to be made the way people actually drink it.

For now, our regular will keep getting his chai boiled a little longer than everyone else's. If you've had karak in the Gulf or elsewhere and have thoughts, we'd love to hear them next time you're in.

And then there's cutting chai

If kadak is the Gulf's cup, cutting chai belongs to Mumbai. The name comes from the portion. You ask for a "cutting" and get half a glass, poured from a pot that has been simmering all morning at a street stall, often with ginger or lemongrass in it. It is strong, sweet and cheap, and the small size means you can have one at every pause in a long day. Watch any Mumbai street corner for a few minutes and you'll see it work as much as a social habit as a drink.

What strikes me is how the same simple thing keeps getting reshaped by the place it lands. The same black leaf, boiled with milk and sugar, became a quick half glass for a city in a hurry. Carried to the Gulf, it thickened into karak. And in a small shop in Rochester, it became a slightly longer boil for one regular who knew what to ask for.

None of these is the real chai. All of them are. That might be the best thing about tea: always adapting and changing through time and locale.