Stopping to chaat with Indian chef Anney Thomas

In its 20-month run in a South Philadelphia storefront, Chaat & Chai drew impressive praise for its South Indian street food, a colorful contrast to the curries and other staples of the more familiar North Indian cuisine. Chaat & Chai — named after the South Indian snacks and tea — was a passion project by Anney Thomas, who’d worked in restaurants and taught English as a Second Language, and Margie Felton, a chef and longtime friend, who left after the first year.

Thomas, whose family immigrated from Kerala to Northeast Philadelphia when she was 9, realized that a South Indian BYOB in the shadow of the Melrose Diner needed a bigger potential audience. She closed in summer 2017 to prepare for Chaat & Chai’s new incarnation — a stand with a limited menu at the Bourse food hall on Fifth Street across from Independence Mall.

Thomas, now 51, spends a lot of time educating customers about chaat, which she broadly describes as a savory snack encompassing a lot of different flavors and textures. “It’s savory, sweet, and tangy,” she said. "And no one knows what I’m talking about. So I actually just have to give them samples, and then it makes sense. Part of my spiel includes the addition of the magic chaat masala, which I have for sale at the stall.” (Chaat masala is a spice mix including toasted cumin, dried mango, black peppercorn, mint, hing (a salt), and black salt.)

Chaat & Chai’s menu includes a chaat, a kati roll (a wrap that Thomas “chaatifies”), and a special, such as the Chaat Pockets she devised. She also plans to sell a roll filled with coconut-braised Kerala short ribs, a dish from the cafe that Inquirer critic Craig LaBan included in his list of favorite dishes from 2016.

I always had to help cook at home, and my dad was a phenomenal cook. He wasn’t a professional cook, but he did almost all the cooking at home. Mostly because he loved it. And my mom made one thing really well, which is fish curry. When she grew up, her dad was a fisherman. Everything else my dad did well. So when I was helping him in the kitchen, I just loved it. I loved it because he made magic with food. And I just loved everything from him. And that’s how I learned to love food.

No. Not at all. I never even thought of that. That’s something that my parents would not have wanted for me. And in fact, when I did work in restaurants, they were really upset about it. There’s such a class thing in India, and so certain people cook. My parents never wanted me to do that. And it’s funny. When I repeat the story back to my mom, she denies it. She’s like, “I never said that.” But she did.

I think my a-ha moment came with cooking, much later, around the time I opened my restaurant, toward the end of 2015. I wanted to open a spice store and a tea and snack bar. And that’s why I started Chaat & Chai. That was my original plan. But then I was shopping around for a space and I didn’t really find anything that I liked for retail. But I fell in love with a space that was perfect for a café. So I kind of just nixed the spice idea and just did a café.

Just because I love food. To be honest, I’ve had other jobs in my life. I used to teach. And I loved teaching. I taught ESL — high school English. That didn’t go so well, because I think I was a terrible fit for the students. I’m not really good with disciplining kids. And right out of college I didn’t have a mentor. I wasn’t prepared to handle the students that I had. And so that was a challenge for me. And those kids were really rough. So as much as I loved ESL, I always, always worked in restaurants and I just really loved food. So it just made sense.

People really loved it, and I think one of the reasons was because there wasn’t a whole lot of South Indian restaurants in Philly at the time. I don’t know that there still is. There’s probably like a handful. And I was doing a lot of South Indian food there. That was new to a lot of people. It was kind of a hard sell, to be honest with you, because people were so familiar with North Indian. So when I would put on like sambar, which is a vegetable curry, and maybe like idli, which is the steamed rice and lentil cake. We did all of those things, and it was so unfamiliar to people that it was really hard for me to sell that. Indians loved it. But everyone else was kind of a hard sell, so I had to adjust my menu to add things more familiar to people. But I also kept all of my South Indian dishes.

To move here. My lease was actually up and that location [1532 Snyder Ave.] was not great for me. I got nice reviews, but I think because I was in deep South Philly and I wasn’t selling cheesesteaks and hoagies, people were not that interested. So most of my business came on weekends and a lot of my customers came from outside of South Philly, so it just made sense to move.

I didn’t. The little bit of business I know, I learned along the way. Talking to the other chef-owners really helps. They taught me how to manage my time cooking and running the business. How to get that done in a day. I have yet to master that, because I feel like I spend all of my time in the kitchen because I have to. And then at night when I get home, I’m too exhausted to do anything else. It’s something that I’m now slowly trying to grow into my schedule so at the end of the month I’m not struggling to get everything done. One day, I will get it down pat.

If had time, I love reading. I love watching horror movies. I love going hiking. At the moment, I have no hobbies, because this is my hobby and my job.