GLC
Head Chef
Naw.. in the south they call it tea. Tea means ice and sugar (usually a lot of sugar). If you want it any other way you need to tell them.
Hot tea.
Unsweetened tea.
You say tea and you get it sweet over ice, with a wedge of lemon hanging on the rim.
I don't know where that "sweet tea" thing came from. I didn't begin hearing the term until the last several years, and I never heard it previously in Texas. And I would have heard it, if it had been in use from 1950 to maybe 1990 anywhere in Texas from Galveston to Sweetwater. (Except far East Texas that I avoid.)
It was always "iced tea." And until fairly recently (if you're old, you have a different definition of "recent"), it was unknown in a lot of the North. About 1960, my aunt's husband moved them to Boston to do his residency. When she got up that way, she stopped in a restaurant and ordered iced tea with her meal. All she got was funny looks. She finally had to order a pot of tea, ice, and water, and the whole restaurant stood around and watched her make iced tea.
I suspect "sweet tea" is something from Georgia or some other strange place. (By law in Georgia, to be "sweet tea," the sugar has to be in it while it's brewing. In Texas, it was always and mostly still is, "ice tea" (note the lack of the "d") or just "tea," and you sugar it yourself, although the "sweet tea" movement is making inroads. If you want it in a cup, you had better order "hot tea." (Although it's a little unpredictable if you just order "tea" in a Chinese restaurant.) I have noticed, too, that when it's called "sweet tea," it's often sickly sweet with sugar, almost to the point of being undrinkable.
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