Noon chai is pink-brown, salty, made with baking soda and usually milk. The first cup tastes strange if you expected sweet masala chai. The second cup, with butter on a girda, is the point. Girda is the round blistered bread. Lavasa is the thin one. Tsot is thicker. You point, they tear, you eat.
Go in the morning. Many of the best trays are gone before office hours. The Boulevard versions exist for people who will not leave the lake. They are fine. A bakery on the way into the old city is closer to the habit.
When
All year. Winter mornings are the most convincing, because the tea is doing a job.
Where
Kandur shops across Srinagar. Follow a queue of people who are not holding guidebooks. If a shop is pushing a saffron tin before the tea has arrived, you are in the wrong queue.
Doing it well
- Order one bread and one tea before you order six breads for a photograph.
- Butter is normal. Sugar in noon chai is not the local habit.
- Stand or sit on the little bench. Do not redesign the shop.
Skip these versions
- Calling it “Kashmiri cappuccino” in your notes. It is salt tea.
- Skipping it every day and then writing that the food was only hotel buffets.