FOOD NEWS
Does Starbucks Or Dunkin' Make A Better Chai Latte?
By Carmen Varner
Chai lattes are creamy, warm-spiced beverages available at Dunkin' and Starbucks. Chowhound’s Carmen Varner taste tested both to see which was better.
The Dunkin' hot chai latte has whole milk and chai tea syrup made with chai tea extract, filtered water, black tea, chai spice, cane sugar, natural flavors, and other ingredients.
While the drink has some spice to it, the milk flavor comes forward the most. This drink is sweet, mildly spiced, and very milky with a nice frothy foam on top.
Starbucks makes its hot chai latte with steamed 2% milk, water, and four chai pumps consisting of water, black tea, cardamom, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and other flavors.
The standard drink uses 2% milk, so the milk taste was more mellow in this drink than in the Dunkin' one. This made the spices a tad more prominent.
Both chains also offer an iced chai latte, which tasted very similar to the hot counterpart in both instances. The iced lattes also suffered from getting watery as the ice melted.
Truthfully, the lattes were quite similar, with a mild, barely-there spice and tea taste. You likely could not distinguish which brand was which if not for the cups.