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.
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.
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.
I went through exactly the same thought process…
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 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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
You get shown where the hot water and teabags are, go do it for yourself, we’re all peasants in Sweden.
IKEA moment (yes, I also had a free cup of tea courtesy of my IKEA Family membership)
Southern US — get black tea, iced. Sometimes asked for sweeter preference.
Hot tea is never on the menu, except for tea houses.
German here. Unless you specify WHICH type of tea you want, you don’t get any. But once you cleared that up, you usually get a cup of hot water with the tea bag (unopened) and 1-2 small packs of sugar, plus maybe a small cookie.
Is the cookie any good?
Not really IMHO. They’re usually Mürbeteigplätzchen - dry, plain, only slightly sweet, with a sandy, coarse texture. They’re meant to be dunked into the tea to soften them, but I dislike having squishy crumbs floating around in my drinks, so either way those cookies just aren’t for me.
EDIT:
These are pretty common.
I assume it’s a digestive biscuit, but I’m also interested.
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.
US West: you get unsweetened iced tea unless they have hot and then they’ll ask. You can only get sweet tea at certain places and chains like McDonalds and Chick-fil-a.
I used to be a southern sweet iced tea drinker but now prefer unsweet.
In this chunk of the Southern Cone they’ll probably assume that you want this:
Cold and sweetened yerba mate tea, often flavoured with lemon or peach. It’s actually quite good, preferable over soda.Brazil?
Yup. I’m not sure if the same tea +→ cold yerba mate tea implication applies elsewhere in Brazil though; in some places I’d expect a “this is a restaurant, if you want tea go back home” or similar, dunno.
In a better place, I usually get a menu with a number of different teas (Ceylon, Assam, Darjeeling, Green, several fruit and herbal teas), which will be served hot and unsweetened, of course.
In a lesser place, I might get a selection of only two or three teas, usually a black breakfast blend, a green tea or Earl Gray, and maybe a mint tea as a herbal variant.
I live in Europe.
If you ask for it at a particular restaurant you will receive a tea pot full of beer, the restaurant is not authorized to sell alcohol. It’s an open secret.
Dim sum restaurant will ask you what kind
Pu-er, iron goddess, chrysanthemum, oolong, saumei, etc.
