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.
Probably an Arizona or Brisk.
Maybe a green tea if you’re in an Asian restaurant.
I’m in South East VA and your border is wrong. It extends mostly up to NOVA, but even in NOVA sweet tea isn’t that uncommon.
As a long time NoVA native I agree sweet tea isn’t uncommon but also not assumed. I think you’d get the same puzzled reaction if you ordered “tea” as if you ordered “soda”.
I assume I would recieves a cup of tea.
How adroit of you.
How grandiloquent of you.
Nice response!
Are we studying for LSATs or what 🥱
not me. i’m far too old for that.
And if these are LSATs words, i’ve lost even more of the little respect i had for the intelligence of lawyers. these are barely high school SAT words from my time.
I’m not trying to insult you the way it may seem. it’s just these are normal intelligent people words. they’re ostentatious (har, har) but that was the point.
now, GRE words, they pissed me off. they’re selected to be misleading.
in any case, I’m far too old for people to test me any more.
“so like iced or hot?” If you ask for hot you get a cup of hot water with a bag of saddness floating in it.
US Midwest - the restaurants I visit don’t have iced tea (IF they serve cold tea, it’s the premade kind at the soda fountain). I get a cup of hot water, a single bag of black tea, and sometimes a lemon slice. If there isn’t sugar at the table you have to ask for it.
Where the hell are you in the midwest that they don’t have iced tea? It’s ubiquitous in my experience.
Not a guarantee here in northern Indiana.
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Pepsi ok?
South East? Is that like… India? Just say so, why so cryptic? Idk what cities in India NC and VA mean either, just use geographical names, common, can’t know every city or province or whatever everywhere around the planet.
They’re in the US. NC is North Carolina and VA is Virginia.
Why the fuck is Virginia VA not VI? And why do Americans expect everyone to know these 2 letter codes for their states?
Haha, I have no idea why. As for Americans, I think because they make up a big chunk of Lemmy users, lots of them just assume everyonen else is from there as well.
VI is the US Virgin Islands.
NM here and it depends on the restaurant, many only have iced tea. But when you ask for tea you will be asked if you wanted sweet or unsweetened. If you say sweet, they bring you packets of sugar and a glass of unsweetened tea.
Fast food places will have both dispensers but mostly the sweet is unsweetened.
North Macedonia?
New Mexico
Here in Estonia you’ll get asked what kind of tea (black, green etc) you want (restaurants here usually have several kinds of it). It’s assumed you want hot tea unless you specifically ask for iced.
Southern US — get black tea, iced. Sometimes asked for sweeter preference.
Hot tea is never on the menu, except for tea houses.
Norway. It depends, but you’d probably be served a cup of hot water with a box of assorted tea bags.
Same in Sweden.
Chicago: Asian restaurants will bring you a pot of already-brewed, ready-to-drink hot tea. So will nicer Western restaurants that have an actual tea program. Coffee shops and mid-tier restaurants will typically give you a cup with the tea already brewing and it’s up to you to remove the bag or sachet in a timely manner.
Everywhere else brings you a little tea-making kit consisting of hot water, teabag(s), and maybe lemon and honey. You have to ask if you want milk, except at oldschool diners.
Good point. There’s definitely that variation in certain restaurants.
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 US there is very high quality tea available in bags. It’s not automatically indicative of worse quality.
You should try more loose leaf teas.
The bag itself will limit the leaf length, and both bagging, transport and storage in the bag degrades teas at a very accelerated rate.
See if you can find a tea with at least 4 cm (half a finger length, or about 1.5") leaf length and compare, preferably with an enthusiast brewing it to get the most flavor out of it. A popular variant is Silver needles.
That’s where you’ll start getting complex and changing flavor profiles from the tea itself, it’s not for everyone, but well worth a try.
It isn’t just the quality of the tea leaf/ powder in the teabag that is being called out, The method of brewing tea ruins it all. Proper tea (is theft, We all laughed, including the toaster) is made by boiling tea leaves/ CTC tea/ dust tea in water or water + milk not by dunking a teabag or 2 in a cup of tepid water for a few seconds, and then topping it with an even more tepid milk.
The Chinese brew lovely tea using loose tea leaves because the water they use is boiling hot and in a teapot, which lets the tea release its flavours quickly, and of course they don’t add milk.
You can try out all methods and compare the results. Of course, if you try loose leaf tea, you might not go back to tea bags.
An advantage of loose tea is you can customize your tea blend. Eg, blend Assam and Darjeeling in 1:1 ratio for a balanced tea of strength and flavour, 1:2 for a more flavourful tea with a decent body, 2:1 for an aromatic tea that can kick like a mule. A Ceylon tea blend of nuwara Eliya tea & Kandy tea is a balm for a tired heart.
It entirely depends on what kind of establishment
Europe.
Either they ask back wether I want hot or ice tea (beverage) or they default to hot tea and bring out the tea arsenal in a small box to choose.
so if you want the beverage (ice tea) you should say that you want ice tea.
