Where they heads at?

I got an email from Alex C. (you go, girl!) asking me to talk about the iced tea in restaurants. Is it really true that almost every food-service joint on this earth has forgotten how to brew iced tea? I hope not, but it looks like it. After doing a comparative survey (otherwise known as getting thirsty in different parts of town), I have concluded that the lost art of iced tea is not hopeless.

Want iced tea at KFC? Well, you're shit out of luck, my friend. Even when the local water doesn't taste like rust, the tea does. My only explanation for this is that they use powdered tea, and powdered tea is bitter. Very bitter. Undrinkable, really. I'm not even sure they're using powdered tea leaves in my neighborhood... maybe just ground-up leaves off the trees. After cars have run over them, on a bad day.

No sugar. Why no sugar? The only sweetened teas I've found were sweetened with corn syrup, making them very sticky. The iced tea at Johnny Rockets is like this. Don't get me wrong, I love their burgers, but their tea is KFC's with some syrup added. Palatable, but not recommended.

Fancy restaurants like steakhouses and that place with the gumbo don't use bitter tea, but they either sweeten with fake sugar, or the tea is mixed weak and not sweetened. Or, perhaps, they quick-brew it and then add fake sugar. In any case, don't order it unless you have to. There is one steakhouse here in Denver, kind of in the "bad" part of town, that sells its food for incredibly cheap and yet makes the best beefsteak I've ever had. These folks have good tea. It tastes like it is probably a commercial brand but not an instant one, and they slow-brew it and then add real sugar. If you're looking for steak and iced tea in Denver, drop by Cowbobas.

Oddly enough, the only real traditional tea I can find is at roadside diners 60 miles from anywhere out on the interstate. You know, the sort of place where the waitress calls you "hun," you can stand a spoon straight up in the coffee without it touching the cup, and everything's as greasy as the oil pan of your Chevy small block.

In conclusion, a lot of fast-food places have even further sacrificed taste for convenience, nice sit-down places don't really care about how their tea is, as long as it looks like iced tea and was made from leaves, and it's the small, uexpected, out-of-the-way places that really care. And even if they don't care, they still do it the way they were taught, the right way. I don't know why most folks who put "tea" on their menus have the nerve to serve something distinctly different than the tea we all know, or why they think that's good for business, but all I can say is, "Where they heads at?" Don't be like those tools: if you're going to do something, do it right.