Travelogue ✈ Sydney Day 2 Paddington Tiger Mottle {NomNom}

The second day was scheduled for the city sighting bus tour and we decided Paddington to be our first stop. Before we bid Paddington goodbye for Bondi, we stopped by at Tiger Mottle for some light eats-

Eat: Third * on chalkboard menu Panfried Califlower +Butter Breadcrumbs, Eggs with Herbs + Aioli Dressing on Olive + Rosemary Toast

Sips: Tea Craft Organic Masala Chai tea and Mocha 

Timeout awarded 4 ☆s for this good coffee and real food sidewalk cafe and so we marked it as our must visit in Paddington- if TimeOut says its good, it must be. This is that kind of space one would yearn to sip a cuppa with a good read in the hand, or do some catching up in a sophisticated neighborhood on a lazy afternoon.

Not an ardent coffee fan, I got the Masala Chai Tea otherwise usually conversed as Chai Tea for convenience. I'm gonna blog about some encounter with Chai Tea for the rest of the blog post and leave the tasting/ambiance review part to Google, Timeout and many other fantastic bloggers  ↖(^ω^)↗

♪  Some Chai Tea Time ♪

Ironically with Masala Chai Tea being an Indian Spice Tea, I am more familiar with Teh Terik  and Lassi at those Indian Roti Prata eateries. I may not have visited enough Indian restaurant to draw such a comparison which in any case, I would love to know where is good for Masala Chai Tea in Singapore besides Starbucks.

It has only been my day 2 but I have noticed that Chai Tea is fairly a big thing here as compared back home in Singapore. There are dedicated selves space for it in Coles/Woolsworths/Super IGA and it makes a common suspect on the cafe drinks menu. Again, perhaps I have not paid enough attention to the Chai Tea in our NTUC/Cold Storage/ Carrefour/ The Market Place and our cafes to comment, it does appear that Chai Tea is more like a way of life in Sydney as compared back home.

I used to intern for an American Born Indian Boss and he would ask his maid to make tea everyday and that was the first and the best Masala Chai Tea I ever had. Aromatic, filling and comforting especially served warm. I didn't knew it was called Masala Chai Tea until later as he always just refer it as tea.

I could still remember how alien it was- the concept of a delightful milk tea with spice is very new and that naming it is a struggle.

Now that we got on to the naming part, some of you might already know about the pleonasm. In fact, there seems to be a community online being really upset about the whole Chai Tea pleonasm. I remembered chancing upon an image saying Chai or Tea, not Chai Tea online and I was fascinated.

I later found out about the etymology of Tea and Chai when My Language Change professor brought it up briefly during the Language Contact and Cultural reconstruction lecture. He said back in time when the Portuguese first traded and brought back tea from Guangzhou, the Cantonese people there called it chàh .  The Portuguese then spread it to India, Central Europe like Czech, Russia which explains why the use of Chai in some places.

The Dutch and the British wanted to be different from the Portuguese and thus went to trade for tea in another part of China being Fujian or Taiwan where the min dialect speakers called it  tê  which was then spread to Western Europe and most prominently borrowed into English as Tea. As we have seen, trade routes affect the spread of languages and through the languages we can associate the similarities in different cultures.

Beyond the unforgettable aromatic velvety taste, I could understand why people would call it Chai Tea even tho it literally means Tea Tea because for us it means a special kind of tea. I guess the association with Masala Chai = Spice Tea is so strong that people drop the Masala and used Chai to mean Spice and added Tea to mean Spice Tea. Of course it would sound ridiculous to those who refer their Tea as Chai but for people like me who see Tea as Tea finds 'Chai Tea' more therapeutic and appetizing than 'Spice Tea'.

So that's that on whats running in my mind  upon every Chai encounter and to side track abit, the  Panfried Califlower was yum and it tasted like mashed potato! Enough said, Im gonna leave you a cute illustration for some Chai Tea Ice Cream making!   ︶ε╰✿

aww
lydd