If you ask for "tea" at a restaurant, what happens and where do you live?
If you ask for "tea" at a restaurant, what happens and where do you live?
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.
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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!