Ispahani Tea

Ispahani Tea tells its own beginning plainly: in 1964 Iqbal Hussain, owner of what the house calls Hyderabad's oldest pharmacy, brought a tea blend back from a trip to Calcutta as a gift for the city's doctors, and the requests for more turned into a brand. The blends were built on three things, taste, liquor and aroma strength, and by 1990 the company had a distribution network across the old city and the new suburbs. In 2022 it opened its first store of its own in the Old City, a wholesale-and-retail shop on Mir Alam Mandi Road opposite Darum Shifa Stadium.

The catalogue has two halves. The Ispahani half is chai patti for the milk pot, sold by the 100 g, 250 g and 500 g: a plain Assam black at 80 rupees the 100 g, a green tea at 70, and the named blends of the house, Marimira, Master Blend and the BHAI ki CHAI Signature Blend the cafés brew. The Finjaan half is the group's specialty range in 25 g, 50 g, 100 g and 200 g packs: Wonder of Darjeeling, a Kashmiri kahwa with cinnamon, cardamom and saffron, butterfly pea Blue Tea and Bulgarian rose buds, each at its regular price here, with no markdown to wait for.

Four places in the city sell the packets, all listed by the shop itself. The Mir Alam Mandi Road store is the wholesale and retail base. Shabbir Medical Hall in Afzal Gunj, near Osmania Hospital, is the pharmacy where it all started and still sells the chai products and teaware. The two BHAI ki CHAI cafés in Banjara Hills, on Road No. 7 by Imam Khomeini Road and on Road No. 3 in Journalist Colony, pour the blends by the cup and sell them by the packet. The site publishes no opening hours, so call ahead; the online shop ships nationwide.