Chai's popularity worldwide

Nowadays, stop by most coffee shops and note that the trendiest beverage is neither espresso nor cappuccino, but something called chai. Rooted in the tea-drinking traditions of India, chai is suddenly the hottest sip in America. Buy fresh Assam chai

Chai is the word for tea in India. Masala chai is spiced tea -- brewed with such spices as cardamom, cinnamon and ginger -- that is invariably served with milk. It dates back to the 19th century when the British occupied India. The original chai combined the sweet and creamy flavor and texture of milk, favored by the British, with spices beloved by Indians.

Actually, what we call chai has been served in Indian restaurants in the United States since the 1940s. During the 1960s and '70s, when Americans became intrigued by Eastern religions and yoga, ashrams sprang up around the country. And chai was the beverage of choice on ashrams.

Raphael Reuben, owner of Masala Chai Co. of Santa Cruz, Calif., the first U.S. company to make prepared chai, says he encountered the tea when he was cooking at an ashram in the Catskills in the early 1970s. When he moved to Santa Cruz in 1975, he saw it featured on the menu of India Joe's, a popular restaurant. He started his company in 1980.

"The way we got into the business was purely fortuitous," Reuben says. "We started making it for concert intermissions and at meditation retreats. People began requesting a gallon here, a gallon there -- `for my restaurant,' `for my coffeehouse' -- and it grew upon itself."

Santa Cruz was the chai hotbed in America for years, says Reuben. "Every chai company in America today discovered chai in Santa Cruz. Any place that has food or drinks in Santa Cruz has to serve chai, like Seattle with espresso drinks."

"Chai next began appearing in Boulder, Colo., in 1986 or '87, and Portland, Ore., was the third stop for it," Reuben says. In 1995, he began commuting weekly to Brooklyn, N.Y., to establish a chai presence on the East Coast. "The market for chai has gone berserk," Reuben says. "We had a 90 percent market share 10 years ago, and now we have 10 to 15, but our business is four times as big."


Now the chai trend has arrived in South Florida.

Bharti Kirchner, author of The Healthy Cuisine of India (Lowell House, 1992), is a native of Bengal living in Oregon. She describes the railway chai ritual in India.

At train stations, boys or even old men have these huge kettles of hot tea over charcoal fires or portable gas stove. They pour the tea into unglazed terra-cotta pots. Passengers reach out the window for these clay pots of hot tea.

Madhur Jaffrey, author of numerous cookbooks and an authority on Indian cuisine,explains that while some people boil their tea with milk and sugar, others serve warmed milk and sugar separately.

Anupa Mueller, owner of Eco-Prima, a tea supply business in Mamaroneck, N.Y., adds that masala chai is not a connoisseur's tea.

"Spiced milk tea is a kind of everyman's tea that transcends classes. And it is enjoyed widely."

Now there is even a chai Web page (www.sni.net/chai), created by Gary Routh, a computer analyst in Colorado.

He says, "I tried to research chai myself, but there was very little out there." So he started a Web site on Father's Day, 1995. A survey of the site yields dozens of recipes.

Barbara Darnell of the Tea Merchant in Boston says, "There are as many definitions of chai as there are for Italian tomato sauce -- everybody in the world has their own way of preparing it."

But, Routh says, "Nothing matches fresh ingredients. That is the most critical thing. Chai is one of those things that reward you if you go to the trouble."

Julie Sahni, author of Savoring Spices and Herbs (Morrow, 1996), confesses to drinking 12 to 16 cups of tea a day