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.
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)
Niederlande
Excuse me what did you just call us?
Nah, I jest.
In all seriousness, thanks for adding the list.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
