Dockside Tea Stall · Spiced Milk Tea
Karak Chai
Photo: Gaurav Dhwaj Khadka / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Its name comes from kadak, Hindi and Urdu for 'strong' — it arrived in Gulf ports as the tea South Asian workers brewed for themselves, and it's now sold from roadside stalls as a local staple.
Black tea is boiled hard with milk, cardamom, and a heavy hand of sugar until it turns deep amber and syrupy, then strained into small glass cups. Roadside stalls and karak windows across Dammam, Khobar, and Dhahran keep pots going around the clock.
Why it's made this way: South Asian labour migration into the Eastern Province during the oil boom brought karak with the workers who settled there, and it became a fixture of the region's street-corner tea culture.
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