Category: Food

A look at the chai latte

Emmett Soldati is very thoughtful about chai lattes.

“It’s spiced, flaky, typically pretty strong and then with some kind of either foamed or steamed milk if it’s hot or milk if it’s over ice, and sometimes a little sweet,” said Soldati, owner of Totally Tea + Coffee in Concord and Dover.

“We have a tagline at the cafe that says ‘Everyone’s a Little Chai-Curious,’” he said. “We sell several different chai blends. But, for our cafe bar, we have a specific blend we make with black tea, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, star anise and black pepper; we use that to make a concentrated tea base. And then with that base we can make hot or iced chais, which allows us to control pretty much every aspect of it. We can control how sweet it is. We usually put a pump or two of brown sugar syrup in it. We can control what milk goes in it, whether it’s a non-dairy oat milk or just a regular cow’s milk. And that allows us to control the flavor and make sure that it’s a nice strong sort of deep amber brown chai latte.”

The color of Soldati’s chai lattes is important to him.

“There’s only a handful of chai companies that sell packaged chai to restaurants and cafes and they tend to be fairly diluted and sugary so by the time you add in milk it basically just looks like tinted milk. To me it’s really important that it’s a nice deep amber and then of course you get a dusting of cinnamon on top,” he said.

According to Soldati, one reason Totally Tea+Coffee’s chai lattes are distinctive is that they came to the development process almost backward.

“We’re basically a tea and coffee company,” he said, “but I think a lot of coffee houses and cafes lead with coffee and then their tea and chai becomes like a secondary afterthought. We started from the other way. We started as a tea company and then expanded our espresso drinks so that we can do like a dirty chai [a chai latte with a shot of espresso], but people know us because of our specific house chai blend.”

Tiana Sargent is the manager of Flight Coffee Co. in Bedford. She is proud that Flight brews its own chai concentrate.

“We [make] a really strong brew using a masala chai from Mem Tea,” Sargent said. “They’re out of Cambridge, Mass. Awesome tea company. But yeah, we make a really strong brew using that, we lightly sweeten it with sugar, and cut it with milk and serve it. You can steam it to serve it hot or you can mix it in a cup.”

“I am very proud of our chai,” Sargent said. “It’s a great balance of sweet and spicy. We don’t overly sweeten it and we go heavier on the chai so you really get the flavor, the spices, the tea. A lot of places will use a really small amount and so it gets really diluted in the milk. And a lot of places will sweeten it too much as well. So you end up with a sweet drink that’s lacking depth. So we try to not put it there. We really want the tea to be tea-forward, spice-forward, and have just the right amount of sweetness [so] that it’s great on its own but if you’re somebody who likes the flavor of chai you can add a syrup and it won’t overdo the sweetness.”

Danielle Beaudette is the owner of The Cozy Tea Cart (104A Rte 13, Brookline, 249-9111, thecozyteacart.com) and a Specialty Tea Institute, (STI) Certified Tea Specialist. She said that chai and chai lattes have been popular in India for decades, but vary from one region to another, depending on the variety of teas and spices grown in a given area.

“The South grows different ones than the North,” she explained. “So depending on where you are, you’re going to get different spices in your chai latte. Some use ginger, some do not. There’s all different spices Some use peppercorns.”

She said that the quality of a chai latte depends on the quality of the tea used.

“We are very proud of the teas that we bring into the country here,” she said. “We only use loose leaf tea, so we never want to hide the flavor of the tea. It would complement the flavor. So it really depends on the place that’s blending it, on how they blend it. If they’re using tea bag tea, [the quality of the tea] probably doesn’t matter to them,” she said.

Brit McCullouch, the Supervisor for Waterworks Cafe in Manchester, said chai lattes have become a fixture on her menu.

“They’ve become very popular,” she said. “We’ve put a twist on the one that we have. We carry an organic and gluten-free honey vanilla chai latte, and we serve that either iced or hot, but we also put a spin on it [to make] a specialty drink. We add flavors to it. So last season we did pistachio and now with spring coming we add coconut syrup to it. It’s fine on its own, but I think always putting a spin on something grabs people’s attention. It’s just a nice alternative to having coffee. It’s a black tea concentrate with the honey and spices, and you pick your milk, and it goes so well with non-dairy milks, dairy, it really is just a very versatile product.”

Roo Hasty at William & Sons Coffee Co. in Concord and Manchester pointed out that the type of milk a chai latte is made with is an important and underappreciated aspect of the enterprise.

“A lot of people who are in their 20s like it with oat milk,” she said, “because it’s creamier. Whenever I have oat milk, it just tastes way creamier. We have oat milk, we have regular [dairy milk], we have coconut milk, we have almond milk. We’ve got all the milks.”

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Spice Restaurant is an adventure

Carolyn Trepanier has put more thought into cocktails than most people have into their retirement plans.

“Spice is the spice of life,” she said. “But spice doesn’t mean spicy,” she clarified. “Spice means flavorful; it doesn’t mean hot, necessarily. I pride myself in creating craft cocktails. I make drinks that are drinkable but also give you that little relaxation that you want. We are like chemists.”

Trepanier is the bartender at The Spice Restaurant & Bar, one of Nashua’s newest restaurants. According to owner Hanh Nguyen, one of the primary goals of the restaurant is to give customers an adventure.

“We love to play with the food a little bit,” she said, “but also keep the culture, the flavors. Our food is a combination of Asian fusion, so we serve Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese. We include a hot pot room too, with more Chinese and Vietnamese food.”

This sense of adventure touches on several different senses, Nguyen said. “That’s why we have a spice for every single plate,” she said. “For example, Vietnamese. Vietnamese is really popular with pho, noodle soup. If the broth looks light, it looks very simple, but actually we cook bones for 24 hours with at least seven different spices like star [anise], cloves and herbs until you can smell the broth when you eat it.”

And, of course, that same sense of adventure extends to the bar.

“I’ve been given the go-ahead and the engine to just make whatever works,” Bar Manager Trepanier said. “I’ve incorporated a lot of syrups here. For example, he” — she pointed to a customer at the end of the bar drinking a cocktail in a rocks glass — “just got a maple old-fashioned, so that’s a maple simple syrup. We do everything; if I can get my hands on anise or coriander out of the kitchen, I’ll amplify it a little bit. So, we have lemon simple syrup, maple, brown sugar, jalapeno brine, olive brine…. I do a lot of hot and dirty [martinis]. I stuff my own blue cheese olives. I made a spiced mango margarita last week. [The customers] loved it. I can do a salty tahini rim. I can do a sugar rim, or no rim.”

The idea, Ngyuen said, is to present guests with a combination of familiar dishes to make them comfortable, with just enough new elements to add to make every meal an experience. She pointed to the short ribs as another case in point. That is a cut of beef that can be very tough, “but we cook it until it rips off the bone, and you can bite into it easily.” From that base the dish takes a surprising, pan-Asian turn. “We try to get people excited, with basil and bean sprouts, and lime. And also in the broth we have greens, like scallions, onions and cilantro. [Then] the customer can see this new thing come out with a short rib.”

Nguyen said that so far it seems like customers have enjoyed Spice’s take on food and drink. “We’ve had good crowds for the first couple of weeks,” she said, “and then everybody has loved the food. They keep returning to try different items on the menu.” At this point the menu hasn’t been set in stone.

“We haven’t gone with our final menu just yet,” she said. “We want to see what the customers here want, and make [the menu] a little smaller, easier for people to come and enjoy.”

At the bar, Trepanier makes a point of making drinks that are a little bit exotic but not complicated.

“Something I’ve come up with on my own,” she said, “is called a Spicy Bloody-Tini. A lot of Bloody Marys come with way too much. I make my own mix. I muddle jalapenos with the seeds, and cucumber, which is European. That gets muddled in, we do the Tabasco, all that, but the garnish on that is a small angled cut of celery, instead of this big stick in your drink. The garnish goes: three olives, celery, cucumber, lemon and lime. I put a jalapeno ring dead in the center, and then I crack black pepper over it. That’s it. [Our customers] are already buying a meal; they don’t need a meal as a garnish on their drink.”

The Spice Restaurant & Bar
300 Main St., Nashua. 417-7972, thespicenashua.com
Open for lunch and dinner seven days a week: Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Featured photo: Carolyn Trepanier, bar manager. Photo by John Fladd.