Manchester has quietly become the karak chai capital of the country. Ten years ago you got a cup of tea at your auntie's house or you went without. Now there are chai cafes on most of the desi high streets in the city and a few of them are very good indeed.
The trouble with a boom is that a lot of places jumped in without learning the method. Here is what karak chai actually is, how to spot a proper one and what to look for anywhere in Greater Manchester.
What karak chai actually is
Karak means strong. The drink is black tea boiled with milk, sugar and cardamom until it thickens and darkens to the colour of caramel. It comes from the Gulf by way of South Asian workers there, which is why you see it written as karak chai, karak tea and chai karak depending on who is selling it.
The important word is boiled. This is not tea brewed in water with milk poured in afterwards. Leaves, milk, water and sugar all go in the pan together and the whole thing is cooked. That is what gives it the body.
Why churning matters
Proper karak is pulled or churned rather than stirred. The tea is poured between two vessels from a height, repeatedly, before it is served.
It is not showmanship. Churning aerates the tea, mixes the fat through it evenly and cools it to drinking temperature without watering it down. The result is smoother and slightly thicker in the mouth. Once you have had a churned cup next to a stirred one the difference is obvious.
How to tell a bad one
There are three common failures.
The urn. Chai made in bulk at six in the evening and kept hot for six hours goes bitter and stewed. The tannins keep extracting the whole time. If your cup tastes sharp and drying rather than round, it has been sat there.
The powder. Instant karak mix exists and plenty of places use it. It tastes of vanilla and sweetener rather than tea and cardamom. It is uniformly beige rather than that deep reddish brown.
Too much milk. Karak should be milky but it should still taste like tea first. If it tastes like warm sweet milk with a hint of something behind it, the ratio is wrong or the tea has not been cooked long enough.
Karak, masala chai, chai latte and pink tea
These get muddled constantly.
Karak chai is strong, sweet and usually just cardamom. The focus is strength and texture.
Masala chai uses a wider spice mix: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, black pepper, star anise depending on the house. More aromatic, less about the punch.
Chai latte is a coffee shop drink. Usually a syrup or concentrate mixed with steamed milk. It is a different thing entirely and nobody who grew up on karak would confuse the two.
Pink tea, also called Kashmiri chai or noon chai, is not a variation of karak at all. It is green tea leaves cooked with bicarbonate of soda, which turns it pink, then finished with milk and usually pistachio. It is often lightly salted rather than sweet. If you have never tried it, order it once. It divides people.
What to eat with it
Karak is sweet and heavy so it wants something salty or fried against it. Samosas are the traditional answer and they are hard to beat. A bun kebab works for the same reason.
It also cuts through dessert better than anything else, which is why we push it alongside the Matilda cakes and the kunafa. Sugar against sugar is too much. Strong tea against sugar is the point.
Where the chai is in Manchester
Longsight and Stockport Road have the densest cluster. Rusholme and the Curry Mile have plenty. Cheetham Hill, Levenshulme and Bolton Road further north all have places doing it well. Most of them are cafes, which means you park up, go in and sit down.
The gap is late. A lot of the chai cafes close around midnight and the ones that go later are usually the busiest, which means queueing for a cup of tea.
Ours, brewed in small batches
We serve karak chai and pink tea at Lahori Lane on Redgate Lane in M12 until 2:00am, seven nights a week.
It is brewed to order in small batches through the night rather than made once and held in an urn. That is the whole reason it holds up. The cup you get at half one tastes like the cup you would have got at six, which is not true anywhere that brews in bulk.
Because it is a drive-in you do not queue for it. You park where the attendant points you, put your hazard lights on and a server comes to your car. The chai comes out to you lidded. Longsight, Gorton, Ardwick, Levenshulme, Openshaw and the city centre are all a short drive.
The full menu is here with prices.
The short version
Boiled not brewed. Churned not stirred. Made fresh not held in an urn. Tea first, milk second. Get those four right and you have found a good cup. The rest of that menu is probably worth trusting too.