In the South East, they bring you sweetened (usually far too sweetened for my tastes) iced tea. This is amazingly universal.
I live in NC and have been probing the border for years.
For “nicer” restaurants, the universal sweet tea boundary seems to be precisely at the NC/VA border.
They ask what kind of tea I want - black, green etc and bring a cup of it together with sugar so I can add it to the tea if I want.
Europe.
Can confirm for Switzerland. It’ll probably be some crappy tea bag quality, like lipton yellow or Twinings. They’ll also probably charge you 4-6 CHF (about the same in USD) for it.
Same, although it’ll probably be served in a little teacup (about 2 cup’s worth) with a generic teabag in it. There may be a small pot of hot water on the side.
(Europe as well)
In the better restaurants and cafes they will bring you a cup of boiled water and a box of different kinds of tea bags from which you can pick one. (The Netherlands)
I would say, good restaurants and cafes do not serve tea in bags :) but this is already details, anyway you get a tea, not a soda called “ice tea”.
Which country?
This can vary wildly per European country, after all.Germany, Austria, Sweden, Niederlande etc.
Niederlande
Excuse me what did you just call us?
Nah, I jest.
In all seriousness, thanks for adding the list.I swear it’s not me, it’s my smartphone. We will have a serious conversation with it about this!
When you said south east I was thinking south east Asia and was trying to decipher what countries NC and VA were, until I realised you were American expecting everyone else to be American and understand American state codes.
I went through exactly the same thought process…
That’s okay, I’m an American and interpreted South East as South East Asia too.
I don’t normally see the space when referring to the Southeastern US, only for South East Asia. I have no idea why that is and have never really thought about it.
Expecting everyone to know the US states is just us getting revenge on Europe for demanding we keep track of which products are named after geographic regions and which are just recipes immigrants from those places brought to America.
If you’re not in Europe, sorry you got caught up in our couple’s spat.
India, You’ll get properly boiled tea with milk (called chai) unless you specifically ask for black/ red tea which you’ll only get in Kerala (called black/kattan ) & in our NorthEastern states (called red tea/lal cha). Tea is by default served hot unless you ask for iced tea which is just tea-coloured flavoured sugar water made with a premix.
The 2nd best way to piss off an Indian is to serve tea brewed with teabags, the best to upset us is to serve tea brewed with teabags and using powdered milk.
We like our tea to be boiled with milk, water, spices, and sugar/jaggery. If you want to make our day, boil the tea with condensed milk, water, and spices and watch us beam. The spices will always be fresh and any combo of sweet cardamom, ginger, cloves, star anise, pinch of cinnamon, lemongrass, black pepper, fennel seeds,
In Kashmiti homes/ restaurants, you’ll get the saffron flavoured Kehwa (no milk in this one, but lots of flavour) and the pink colored salt tea (noon chai) made with green tea leaves, milk, rock salt, cardamom, pistachios, almonds. and baking soda.
I am salivating. I’ve not been to India, but I’ve been made a boiled chai by an Indian at a community dinner in my area and it was absolutely sublime.
Glad you liked it. Tea is very serious with us and it should be boiled. Teabag tea is just warm dishwater in comparison.
A compliment on tea (chai achchi bani - the tea is made well) is huge and will make you a favouite & repeat guest.
Try to get your hands on loose Assam CTC black tea or (even better) loose Nilgiris CTC black tea. and go to town experimenting with spices and sweeteners (karupatti/palm jaggery adds a new dimension of flavour). Nilgiris tea is forgiving and doesn’t get astringent if you overboil it, while Assam will teach you a lesson in bitterness. Darjeeling is all flavour but lacks oomph (or as Indians say ‘not strong enough’ ). With spices, a little goes a long way. The spices should be crushed and added to the water right in the beginning so they can boil and infuse their flavour. Another trick is to close the lid and let it sit for 1-2 mins after taking it off the flame and before serving.
In the UK they bring you dinner
Netherlands: you get asked what kind, or hot water with a box teabags to pick from.
Iced tea is a seperate thing entirely.
Ordering tea and getting hot water and teabags in return is my restaurant pet peeve. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even bother unless I know they’ll actually bring me a pot of already-brewed tea.
Why?
I’m from the US and I don’t order hot tea in a place that might do this. I wouldn’t trust them to make it, either, though. My reason is that the water they’d bring just isn’t going to be hot enough to steep with.
I love black tea steeped in water that started close to boiling when the tea was added and poured (or teabags removed) before the bitter tannins get too strong. Even cheap black tea can be decent if it’s brewed well.
If they bring me a pot of water, it probably came from the hot water thing on their coffee maker and it already started not hot enough even before they put it in a non-insulated metal pot. If it were hot enough, I’d actually prefer to put the bag in myself so I know when to take it out.
On average, folks in my country have never even had hot tea brewed well, and I think that bad tea is worse than bad coffee.
If I’m in, say, an Asian place, I’d be more likely to order tea since I reckon the staff are more likely to know how good it can be and how to make it.
Because I don’t want to have to prepare my own drinks; that’s why I came to a restaurant instead of eating at home.
Calling dropping a tea bag in a cup of hot water “preparing a drink” is a bit of a stretch
well you also have to take it out
That is true
Do you also need someone to pour it in your mouth?
I don’t think it’s bizarre to expect that my food be in ready-to-eat condition when it’s served, why should drinks be any different?
You’re getting downvoted, but I can relate (even if I never drink tea while out.). It isn’t much work to let it steep, then take the tea bag out, but it’s not about the literal work, but the brain energy involved. My short term memory is trash, so I often forget about drinks; I had to learn to enjoy lukewarm or cold coffee, otherwise I would rarely drink coffee.
For me, the water is always too cold to properly steep tea from by the time they bring it.
Malaysia is fun for this. Just asking for tea (teh) will get you a hot sweet milk tea, if you want no milk you ask for “teh-O”. If you want no milk AND no sugar you ask for a " teh-O kosong", kosong basically meaning empty. Then of course there are the ice variants like “teh-O ais kosong”. So basically the default is getting everything except ice, then you add modifiers to take things out.
But tea language strangeness aside, Malaysian teh-tarik (pulled tea) is amazing and should get more global attention. Even the preparation can be quite a show and there are local competitions.
Netherlands. You’d get a glass or cup of hot water, and a box of tea bags to select from. If you want ice tea, you explicitly have to call that out. Just “tea” refers to the hot (original) version without sugar.
Same in Hungary.
In Australia - you might get asked what type of tea. There’s usually about 10 types of the menu from the usual English Breakfast or Early Grey to Chai, green or some other more fruity variants. It may come in a pot, or a cup, or a mug, depending on the sophistication of the joint. You’ll usually be asked “cup or mug?”.
And in Australia, they’re pretty good about knowing which teas need sugar and or milk and usually bring that separately to the table for you to apply the way you want. Other times they’ll ask “how many sugars and how much milk”?
Everywhere else in the world they either bring woefully too little milk, or can’t even begin to understand the concept of milk in your tea. (mainland Europe and Asia mostly).
“Black, green, peppermint, chamomile, melissa, ginger?”
10 minutes later you get a hot cup with a bag in it, no clue how long it’s been sitting in there already. Usually a bag of sugar and/or a cookie on the saucer.
Germany.
I knew it was Germany from the selection alone. Might want to add Earl grey, if the restaurant is feeling adventurous
Also Germany: The place where I drink tea has a seperate tea menu of several pages.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_balm (Melissa officinalis)
Hong Kong. It depends on the establishment.
In big Cantonese restaurants, tea is the very first thing you have to choose, and you are expected to know what tea varieties there are. They then brew and bring you the tea in a white porcelain pot, and can top it up with water upon request (or do it yourself since water is always served alongside the tea). I generally like 鐵觀音, but my dad prefers 普洱. The tea is unsweetened, and if you ask for it sweetened or put sugar in it, well idk what happens but you’d probably get laughed at and kicked out.
In smaller diners, you often can pick the type of tea you want from a menu, though those are often not traditional Chinese teas, and are hot and sweetened by default, though you can always ask for it unsweetened or iced. Milk tea is always available (I can only assume under threat of public boycott). Depending on the diner, various fruit teas would also be available.
LOL! Clever of them to use tea as an identity test. Quite like Ukrainians asking suspected Russians to pronounce ‘Palyanytsia’.
Shibboleth
Yes! That was the word I was looking for!
Thank you.
I still want to visit Hong Kong but don’t have the budget atm, and that first paragraph isn’t helping
Also, 鐵觀音 (Tie Guan Yin) is also my favourite tea, that’s a coincidence!
As a Canadian (and probably for the rest of the world) this is the weirdest question. Why would someone serve sweetened iced tea before serving just tea? Why does so much shit come full of sugar?
I read this comment and choked my nestea I’m drinking right now for breakfast. 29g of sugar… It just tastes so good, I’m addicted. Plz send help!
I had an iced cap from Timmies for the first time in 7 years and I don’t recall it being so sweet. But you are right, everything is fully loaded with sugar nowadays
There was a time when my day started with a French vanilla and a glazed sour cream donut every day. I haven’t really eaten much fast food in the last decade but I had that combo again on vacation this year and it was like chasing a bloc of sugar with pure syrup. How did I do it?
Americans in general don’t drink “tea” they drink coffee. Could be left over from revolution when tea became a symbol of British oppression.
We don’t drink tea in the same way as the British, but sweet tea is an extremely common drink in the south-east us. It’s almost certainly the top drink after soda and water.
In my experience they don’t drink coffee either, rather than over-roasted bitter tarmac
I’m watching my spending and figured I’d buy the “fruity light roast” from the grocery store and it tastes like what I imagine drinking an ashtray would taste like.
From someone who once drank an ashtray on a pub bet, I’ve definitely drank some worse coffees.
I’m pretty certain it’s because it’s so damn hot a humid in the SE US. Sweat tea is a good way to cool down and get some sugar for energy. I’d guess it mostly replaced Switchel, and it’s now pretty much the standard tea drink. If you’re outside, you almost certainly don’t want hot tea.
In Spain they will immediatelly ask you if you are sick. Only sick people drink tea there, or english tourists, but they will usually go to english bars anyway. In those places they will serve black tea and ask you if you want it with lemon or milk.
Now that is interesting.
Wow that is not true at all.
I’m happy to get conviced otherwise but in my 26 years living in Spain, Valencia and Andalucia, that was what I have experienced.
In Vietnam, if it’s a café they’d ask you hot or cold.
Normal restaurants you’d get iced tea, usually very strong unsweetened Lipton yellow label.
Norway. It depends, but you’d probably be served a cup of hot water with a box of assorted tea bags.
Same in Sweden.
Same in amarica tho from what I’m hearing from states that aren’t Vermont I’m a little scared that I’m now living in Florida for college
Texas - you’ll get a cup filled with sugar, sugar, ice, sugar, water that was barely run through some tea leaves, and sugar. I always specify unsweet tea.
How close are you to the nearest buccees?
There is one 2 exits north of me. Less than a 10 minute drive.
Lucky!
Sadly, it more of a nuisance than anything else to me now. It’s like I just want to get to Home Depot and now I have to sit through the traffic it causes 24/7/365.
Also, as they continue to expand, it feels like the mystique is wearing off. They used to only be in the middle of nowhere and are a welcome site when traveling 4+ hours between major cities. When I’m just trying to get around town, I’d rather just go to and normal gas station, I can just pull in fill up and be on my way, without having to navigate a sea of pumps and people all over the place.
