Chaayos, Mumbai

Chaayos, Powai

Are you a tea or a coffee person? I am a chai person. My mornings don't begin without them. I am a cranky person and without chai I will be even more crankier. However, I never have tea from a restaurant unless and until it is an udipi restaurant or it is complimentary. Not worth my bucks.  However, I do visit them for their snacks and that's what I was here for. 

The place is a little cramped where every inch of space has tables and chairs put it to accommodate as many as they possibly can and it's almost always crowded even at 4 pm on a weekday. I guess everyone working in the vicinity drops in here for a quick meeting/break etc. So unless and until you are ready to share space with others, this might not the place you want to drop in at.

It's self-service where you in place your order and collect it, so there is not much to say or write about the service in that area. However, one interesting thing is that when you are in the queue to place your order, they have a small tab (I am guessing) linked to the billing machine. You are asked to put in your details and you are registered as a customer. This might come across as completely irrelevant, but the thing is you get the customer details which is very crucial to these restaurants (I end up noticing these things now because of the line of work I am in ). So that's a pretty smart move on their end. You may not fill it when you are presented with a tab on your table even, but there you just got to. 

The order we placed was for one kulhad chai, one thandi chai with elainchi (cardamom), one butter chicken wrap and loaded chicken cheese max. The kulhad chai is the chai that you get in the mountain type areas, served in an earthen vessel, the vessel itself adds flavor to the chai. Yum! The thandi chai was a risk as I have never really heard of something like this before. It's not an iced tea. It's the cold coffee version of tea and actually turned out to be good. I just wish like cold coffee they had added a little whipped cream to it. It would have definitely elevated the flavors. The butter chicken wrap was average. I didn't really feel that it was butter chicken at all. It also had sev mixed in which didn't really do much for the butter chicken as such, but was rather disturbing, if that makes sense. I had wanted to go for the keema pav but my friend was hungrier and he said he would prefer the wrap. Should have listened to me.  The loaded chicken cheese max was literally how I had imagined and desired it to be and that in itself is rare. An open bread topped with seekh/ meatball type chicken smothered in just the right amount of gravy that you don't feel you are only having gravy, cheese topped and baked to delight. I am a little glad that it didn't have shredded chicken or cubes of chicken, I think it would have brought down the flavours a notch. This was perfection. I could have had more. The only thing a little disappointing is the price (199+ taxes, I am of the opinion that it's priced a little high than it should be)

Would I step in here again? Hell, Yeah! But only on days when I feel a little rich. Also, when I want to catch up with a friend, I think I have started to prefer tea shops to coffee shops and thank you for that! The reign of tea shops has just begun, please take note. Yahoo!

WHAT WE HAD - Kulhad chai (Yum!)

                           Elainchi Thandi Chai (Yum!)

                                  Butter Chicken Wrap (Average!)

                           Loaded Chicken Cheese Max (More is Less)

DAMAGES - Rs 750/- Approx (Incl. Of Taxes)

WHERE -  Chaayos., Ground Floor, 12, Citi Park Building, Central Avenue, Hirandani Business Park, Powai, Mumbai