Still the best drink at Bao, no matter what ingenious concoctions the bartenders come up with. A tall small glass takes you back to, if not your childhood, then the childhood of owners Erchen Wai Ting and Shing Tat — sweet, comforting balm that hits both the austerity and nostalgia buttons that the milk at the end of a bowl of cereal does for most Westerners. One is never enough. On the thin side.

Although in Hounslow, Taste of Pakistan serves a London-wide, predominantly Muslim community who devoutly make the trek because they know how special it is. This means that they don’t sell alcohol, but the best accompaniment to glorious spatchcocked chickens, whole roasted lamb legs and chapli kebabs glistening with fat on their undersides is doogh, fragrant and green-flecked, of course served out of a huge jar that still has the sticker on, true Desi style.

What is the best single piece of kitchen equipment people wish they could have in their home? A sous-vide machine? An artisan Japanese knife? 4 (four) ovens? No, the answer is clearly an ayran machine. Seeing these at any Turkish restaurant is a joy, watching how the ayran constantly flows and aerates, leaving a bubbly sink of foam. Not every restaurant that serves ayran has one, but one place that does is Neco Tantuni in Ponders End. Get one for the tantuni and then one for the kunefe.

The idea of turmeric lattes becoming ‘a thing’ is amusing to anyone from south Asia, even more so the branding of them as ‘golden milk,’ which sounds euphemistic. The healing properties of haldi are now well known in the West, but its staining properties — for anyone who has found their fingernails looking jaundiced days after using it — are even greater.

Fruit is a big deal in Colombia — fruit juices even more so. In Elephant and Castle, one of London’s Colombian hubs, the monopoly on fruit is owned by Chatica, a tienda under the arches that imports these technicolor marvels from across South America. Soapy guanabana, acidic lulo, and mora, an Andean species of blackberry. Ask for these in any restaurant, Lenos and you will be asked ‘con agua’ or ‘con leche’ — the mora is good with both, and even in milk is a striking Grimace purple.

Southall has long been the site of anti-fascist resistance from the Indian community, who opposed the National Front’s presence during the 1970s. If it happened again in today’s climate the milk drink of choice for hurling might be Lahori-style falooda. The version at Dawat is legendary and here the Persian inflected rose milk comes out looking like a strawberry knickerbocker, betrayed only by the addition of basil seeds that sit on top like frog spawn.

Yes this exists, yes it is delicious. Salt cheese tea has taken over Asia in a way not seen since, well bubble tea, but has yet to really take off in London. Kissaten, along with dessert parlour Yi Fang, are one of the few places tentatively introducing it. It’s well worth trying, salty cream cheese often works well in desserts, both counteracting and accentuating sweetness, here it balances out the cloying notes of nutty, roasted hojicha milk while providing a fluffy head to sip it through.

A junkyard of a dessert, a glorious mix of colour and texture that defies explanation, this is maybe the be all and end all of milk based drinks. From bottom to top there’s coconut gel, jackfruit, red bean, ice, evaporated milk, leche flan, wafer, purple yam ice cream and cornflakes, all useful shrapnel that would add to a dry cleaning bill. To be covered in Halo Halo would be the ultimate act of disrespect.