Issue #3 of the Chai Bhai newsletter. All rankings are definitive. All arguments are welcome.
Everyone in India has an opinion about which city makes the best chai. These opinions are held with the same conviction and passion as views on cricket, cinema, and the correct ratio of ghee in dal. We have decided to settle the matter.
The Rankings
1. Varanasi
Category: Ritual and experience
No city gives chai more context than Varanasi. Drinking a kulhad chai at sunrise on the ghats of the Ganges, watching the river and the aarti boats and the extraordinary human theatre of India's holiest city — the chai is inseparable from where you are drinking it. Varanasi chai is not the best technically, but chai is not a technical exercise. It is an experience. And nowhere is the experience more transcendent.
2. Kolkata
Category: Intellectual and cultural
Kolkata's cha — drunk slowly at Indian Coffee House, argued over, accompanied by shinghara and political opinions — is chai as a civilisational practice. The city drinks with more intentionality than anywhere else in India.
3. Mumbai
Category: Speed, character, democracy
Cutting chai, ₹10, standing at a tapri, everyone drinking the same thing — Mumbai's chai is the most equalising force in one of the world's most unequal cities. It is also, technically, very good: strong, sweet, fast.
4. Amritsar
Category: Community and hospitality
The langar at the Golden Temple serves chai along with free food to all visitors, regardless of religion or background, every day, without exception. No other city in India embeds chai so deeply in the practice of community service. Amritsar earns its place on this list not for the chai alone but for what the chai means.
5. Darjeeling
Category: Source and singularity
You cannot talk about chai without talking about where it begins. Darjeeling's position in the rankings is not about street stalls or tapris — it is about standing in a tea garden in the Himalayas, watching women pick leaves that will eventually become your morning cup. This is chai at its origin.
The Honourable Mentions
Hyderabad: Irani chai in a traditional chai hotel is unlike anything else — thick, almost syrupy, served with Osmania biscuits.
Lucknow: The chai culture of Lucknow is refined, unhurried, and deeply imbued with the city's Nawabi sense of leisure.
What did we get wrong? Write to us.
— Chai Bhai