[dropcap size=big]W[/dropcap]henever I was sick growing up, my mother forced me to drink haldar doodh, a traditional Indian drink she made with honey-turmeric paste and hot milk. As soon as I woke up and got ready for school, she'd hand me a warm mug of the beverage, after microwaving for one minute.
If my mom wasn’t looking, I’d pour what I could down the drain. But if I absolutely had to drink the haldar doodh, I’d chug it, standing up in our tiny kitchen before letting myself out the back door and walking to elementary school. I hated it, and not just because the turmeric tasted too bitter and flat for my palate. My bigger impetus for resisting the beverage alongside my morning bowl of cereal was that I knew it’d stain my tongue yellow, and that the kids at school would inevitably notice.
As I’ve gotten older though, I’ve come to embrace the turmeric. Haldar doodh, which translates from Gujarati directly to "turmeric milk," is a traditional treatment with coughs and colds, due to turmeric’s anti-inflammatory properties. It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles that I began drinking haldar doodh or haldar paani ("turmeric water") to help me with allergies. And while turmeric wasn’t always as trendy as it is today, turmeric lattes or golden milks are now available at places all throughout the city.
When seasonal allergies hit me this year, I went back to the basics in some of L.A.’s popular cafés by trying local versions of haldar doodh. June Gloom is lingering, and I hadn’t had a sip in over a decade, but in recent weeks I decided to try a few different places in the city to see how they’d compare to my mother’s, and whether or not I liked them.
Here are four places where I tried the turmeric latte, either iced or hot.