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Went to Chicago and Ate Nepalese Food at Chiya Chai

With only one night in Chicago, and a rainy one at that, I hopped into a taxi to the neighborhood of Logan Square to enjoy dinner and drinks at Chiya Chai, recently named Best Indian Restaurant in Chicago by Chicago Reader. A fan of Indian food, I was looking forward to a comfort meal and got so much more.

Chiya Chai is owned by brothers Swadesh and Saujanya Shrestha who grew up in the midst of the world of tea in Kathmandu, Nepal. Their family are Nepalese tea farmers and their father was one of the first exporters of Nepalese tea to the United States. Swadesh Shrestha recalled growing up in the foothills of the Nepalese Himalayas and loved going to his grandfather's tea shop where he would sit quietly sipping a cup of milky chai as he watched the comings and goings of the village.

The brothers, along with Swadesh's wife Rajee, who is also from Kathmandu, opened a restaurant in Minneapolis and ten years later, in August of 2016, opened Chiya Chai in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago.

21 November, 2017

Please The Palate October 2017 Newsletter

Summer has passed and here we are in the fall of 2017. Another year is flying by! At Please The Palate we are going nonstop with events and writing. I...

17 October, 2017

Geezer’s Public House in Woodland Hills, CA

When I was first invited to check out Geezer's Public House in Woodland Hills, being an American, I thought it was odd that a bar was the name of a cranky old man. But the word Geezer has a different meaning in British culture. Geezer's is a public house, or a pub, which is a popular social drinking establishment in Britain.

As posted outside the restrooms at Geezer's, a geezer is a "descriptive word in the UK used to define a man's characteristics. A geezer will be found usually outside a pub with a pint in his hand on match day. They commonly like football, scrapping, beer, tea, tits, and Barry White." Basically, a geezer in British terms is a "guy" or a "bloke" or a "dude".

12 October, 2017