Standing over a simmering pot of chai, Stella Ku’s (古詩筠) gold bangles jingle as she crushes ginger roots and mixes freshly ground cardamom into individual saucepans. The tea leaves, handpicked from the misty mountains of Assam and Darjeeling, take 10 minutes for the perfect brew.
Ku herself is from Taichung, but this recipe hails from generations of her husband’s family, the skills passed down to her by her mother-in-law and perfected over months of practice in Punjab, India.
Indus Chai in Daan District (大安) is a small family-run business, blending rich Indian traditions with Taiwan’s growing demand for gluten-free dining. This spot is a rarity: a celiac-owned and operated business with an entirely gluten-free menu. For us gluten-eaters, it’s a quiet spot to while away a rainy afternoon with owner Rajat Majitha, always keen to share his wealth of tea-related expertise over a mug of spicy chai.
Photo: Hollie Younger
Chai is the most consumed drink in India after water.
“We don’t have a common language, dress or culture, but what unites India is chai,” Majitha says.
British colonialists took tea from China to India and utilized the lush climate, fertile soil and, ultimately, cheap labor. For the British elite, 90 percent of the tea leaves ended as waste, discarded as a fine dust. But for poorer local tea farmers and factory workers, it was gold dust: cheap caffeine.
Photo: Hollie Younger
“India loves milk, and India loves spice,” says Majitha, which soothed the beverage’s bitterness as it spread across the country, sold from the shoulder poles of Chai Wallahs.
Today, chai is as much an art and a delicacy as its British-brewed ancestor. Majitha uses the world’s two best black teas, Darjeeling and Assam, which he hand-selects at auctions in India.
Indus Chai sells a range of brews, from fall specials with cinnamon and ginger to a green cardamom Elaichi Chai and their classic Masala Chai (all NT$340). Cardamom reduces body temperature for summer sipping, while ginger heats the body with a spicy kick. These China teapots of chai are expensive by Taipei standards, but each is made to order and uses only the best ingredients.
Photo: Hollie Younger
For the food options, I admittedly look to my celiac accomplice for her opinion; there’s a reason we typically use gluten for fluffy doughs and crispy batters. But the bread used for their Masala Sandwich (NT$260) is delivered by Taichung’s Kiseki Bakery and is pretty darn good, with the right balance of chewy and airy.
The samosa (NT$180) casing is crispier than expected, but it keeps the snack light with its heavy chickpea and potato-based filling. Without gluten as a binding agent, the chickpea, tapioca and rice flour dough cannot be folded or stretched. Majitha takes up to two hours each morning to hand-make the day’s samosas. My only complaint, why am I served Mexican-style salsa on the side when there exists such a thing as mango chutney?
The best snack is overwhelmingly the sabudana vada (NT$180), Indian-style hash browns served in thin discs with a mint-yogurt dip. These traditionally use tapioca pearls, an interesting use of Taipei’s beloved ingredient for desserts and bubble teas.
Photo: Hollie Younger
Celiac options in Taipei are extremely limited; there exists just a small selection of gluten-free restaurants and a discouragingly small Facebook group. Gluten-free diets appear to be incredibly rare here, due to genetic or lifestyle factors, when compared to Western capital cities. It’s not just noodles and bao buns to watch out for — gluten lurks in nigh-on everything Asian, from soy sauce to Taiwan Beer. But Majitha takes care to keep every process and every surface free from flour and contaminants, while Ku puts just as much love into each pot of chai.
Overall, Indus Chai delivers on its promise: exceptional tea, celiac-safe snacks, and a warm slice of India in the heart of Taipei.
Photo: Hollie Younger
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
RSS