New Indian chai cafe has cups to order, gulab jamun doughnuts, masala cookies

Every cup of chai is brewed to order at Chai Pyala, a new bakery and cafe in Lakewood — the only one of its kind in the South Sound.

Owners Honey and Guru Batth might be familiar names to regulars of the Lakewood Farmers Market. In the late 2010s, when the weekly summer event still happened at Towne Center, the couple served chai and traditional Indian sweets like gulab jamun and ras malai, as well as custom treats such as a strawberry-lemonade cookie. A few years ago, they refocused their attention on opening a cozy, comfortable storefront where Honey could share her love of chai, paired with homemade pastries that honor Indian flavors.

“I always knew I wanted to do fusion baking,” Batth shared in an interview at the cafe, which opened in February next to Bowlero Lanes. For the Punjabi native, that inspiration has created specialties such as a gulab jamun doughnut, a mango mulai that resembles tiramisu and an orange-cardamom bun.

The moist interior of the doughnut whispers of rose, the center dolloped with dough to hold additional rose petals. Although the traditional dessert would be fried, Honey bakes it out of necessity here, but the result speaks to her ability to transform American treats into something magical.

Her “deep-dish cookies” took time and testing to perfect. These unusual treats are half an inch tall but manage to retain a pleasant chew on the inside and crunch on the outside. Honey encourages guests to dip the signature masala chocolate chip, best served warm, into a cup of masala chai. Other extra-thick cookies include Pistachio Indulgence with cream cheese and white chocolate and one studded with M&M’s.

The twisted orange-cardamom bun, reminiscent of a Scandi kardemummabullar, has earned a permanent spot in the pastry case, said Honey. Served warm, it’s easy to taste why, but then you learn that the owner/baker is crushing cardamom pods, zesting oranges and squeezing the orbs by hand. For the mango mulai, she soaks ladyfingers in mango juice, layers the cakes with fresh fruit and mango-infused chantilly cream.

There are “no shortcuts” in cooking or baking in an Indian household.

“As kids, if we wanted to bake a cake, you would whisk the eggs by hand,” she recalled of her upbringing in Amritsar, the second-largest city in Punjab famous for Harmandir Sahib, or the Golden Temple, one of the holiest sites of Sikhism. She and Guru met there, married and later moved to the U.S. Guru served as an analyst in the Army, which took them to Missouri and Joint Base-Lewis McChord. After a stint back in India, they returned to Lakewood, where they are raising their two children, now teenagers.

“My mom is a very good cook — she’s famous in our families,” said Honey. “Now I realize it’s from her,” she added of her own passion for baking.

‘Chai means comfort, culture’

Her mother also helped her create the house chai masala. Every family has their own recipe, consisting of a blend of spices including black pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, ginger and sometimes saffron, fennel, mint, lemongrass or ajwain (a seed related to parsley).

“There’s no secret,” Honey said when I hesitated to ask about their recipe. “It’s the spices, it’s the proportions.”

She called particular attention to the texture of her chai, though — each ingredient’s whole form still visible, still coarse, and most definitely toasted.

“The more you make it into a powdery form, it burns,” she said, referring to cheap versions. “It’s not even chai — it’s just a scoop of powder.”

That type of masala chai (and the syrupy concentrate from a carton) has skyrocketed in popularity, permeating coffee shop menus and grocery store shelves. Although chai dates back centuries, the spiced, caffeinated version originated in the early 20th century, as British colonialists took over Assam, a region along the Silk Road bordering India and China, after losing access to Chinese tea. In exploiting workers, the British grew terrible tea but tried to get people to drink it anyway, as food writer Leena Trivedi-Grenier described in a 2021 story for Epicurious. Indian street vendors began adding masala, which angered the Brits. In a sense, the addition of spices to the low-grade, tiny, pearl-shaped, “crush, tear, curl” tea leaves was rebellious — a symbol of resistance. To make it requires just a little bit of time but a lot of attention — it will bubble over the pot if you dare look away at the wrong moment — and the potency of the spice is such that it should be sipped slowly, intentionally.

The name of the Batths’ cafe speaks to that history.

“Chai means tea, pyala means a cup, hence a cup of tea or a cup of chai,” explained Honey. “Chai is just not a beverage for me. Chai means comfort, chai means culture. Every cup has a story, every cup is handcrafted. We wanted to share our culture with everybody.”

Here it’s served unsweetened, but Honey recommends a packet or two of raw brown sugar to let the flavors pop. Her goal, she said, is to “create the balance of flavors and sweetness in every drink.”

She also uses the chai and other ingredients to create house concentrates and syrups for hot and cold drinks. Specialty lattes likewise harken to Indian desserts, topped with cold foam and real rose petals and saffron, or in the case of the ras malai, the dense three-milk, paneer and pistachio sweet itself.

Throughout their farmers market years, Honey also developed her skills as a cake decorator. She can create “custom cakes for any occasion,” she said, but on the regular you’ll find a pretty black forest cake, layered with light whipped cream dotted with bright-red cherries. It might sound out of place, but she and Guru noted it’s a staple at bakeries all over India.

Other treats in the case on a mid-March visit included orange-ginger-honey bundt cakes, salted macadamia muffins with a Nutella center, gluten-free brownies with avocado and chocolate or beets and rose, and Celebration Cheesecake — a spin on motichoor ladoo, a popular festive dessert with besan (chickpea flour), pistachios, rose, cardamom and a distinctive orange hue.

On top of the signature chais and lattes, Honey plans to add house lemonades with fresh-grated ginger and rose, lassis beyond the usual mango and pastries like a “samossant,” a savory croissant by way of samosas.

Chai Pyala

• 3810 Steilacoom Blvd. SW, Lakewood, instagram.com/chai.pyala
• Tuesday-Sunday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
• Details: Indian chai cafe with custom drinks and house pastries; special orders welcome, space also available for events
• Seating: cafe-style tables and chairs, plus lounge area and counter seating; takeout available

This story was originally published March 22, 2026 at 5:00 AM.