They ask what kind of tea I want - black, green etc and bring a cup of it together with sugar so I can add it to the tea if I want.

Europe.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Netherlands. You'd get a glass or cup of hot water, and a box of tea bags to select from. If you want ice tea, you explicitly have to call that out. Just "tea" refers to the hot (original) version without sugar.

"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.

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.

In Australia - you might get asked what type of tea. There's usually about 10 types of the menu from the usual English Breakfast or Early Grey to Chai, green or some other more fruity variants. It may come in a pot, or a cup, or a mug, depending on the sophistication of the joint. You'll usually be asked "cup or mug?".

And in Australia, they're pretty good about knowing which teas need sugar and or milk and usually bring that separately to the table for you to apply the way you want. Other times they'll ask "how many sugars and how much milk"?

Everywhere else in the world they either bring woefully too little milk, or can't even begin to understand the concept of milk in your tea. (mainland Europe and Asia mostly).

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.

As a Canadian (and probably for the rest of the world) this is the weirdest question. Why would someone serve sweetened iced tea before serving just tea? Why does so much shit come full of sugar?

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.

Norway. It depends, but you'd probably be served a cup of hot water with a box of assorted tea bags.

Cincinnati Ohio, they'd ask you if you meant sweet or unsweetened iced tea

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.

Tea would be an unusual drink to ask for in a restaurant (as opposed to a cafe) unless they do breakfast/brunch, or you were partaking of "afternoon tea" (a rare treat for the ordinarily incomed).

If it was "afternoon tea" you would be offered a menu of different teas to choose from and it would be served with a tiered tray of finger sandwiches and pastries. And you would be charged a ridiculous amount of money for what is basically a small picnic.

If you were ordering tea as a drink in a restaurant, it would most likely come in a small teapot (with a teabag unless it was a very posh place), possibly some extra boiling water to refresh the pot after you've poured some tea, a cup and saucer, a small jug of milk, and a bowl of white sugar or sugar cubes (or a selection of packets of sugar or sweetener if it was not such a posh place).

If you asked for tea in a cafe, depending on how fancy the cafe is, it might look similar to the restaurant offering, or it might be a teabag in a mug of boiling water, pots of UHT milk, and packets of sugar.

No one would ever assume you wanted iced tea unless you specified it. And if you did specify it, they would most likely look blank and say they couldn't do it. I can't recall ever seeing it on a menu. Hot tea would be providable by any establishment whether or not it was on the menu because pretty much every kitchen in the UK has teabags in it.

In Texas, they would ask whether you want sweet or unsweet and you'd get a glass of iced tea. The closer you are to Louisiana, the sweeter the tea.

You have to specify hot tea, if that's what you want.

You get shown where the hot water and teabags are, go do it for yourself, we're all peasants in Sweden.

I'm in Georgia and if you ask for tea you usually get asked "sweet or unsweet".

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.

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.

Southern US — get black tea, iced. Sometimes asked for sweeter preference.

Hot tea is never on the menu, except for tea houses.

They’ll probably bring a sad cup of water that used to be boiling and a Lipton tea bag. NYC, USA.

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.

Here in Estonia you'll get asked what kind of tea (black, green etc) you want (restaurants here usually have several kinds of it). It's assumed you want hot tea unless you specifically ask for iced.

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.

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.

I live in Australia now but someone already had a good answer for Australia.

I’m from Indonesia and there it’s most likely sweet iced tea if you don’t specify anything. But I think it’s more likely they would ask, warm or iced, and sweetened or unsweetened. You’ll get black tea with sugar syrup, sometimes regular sugar for warm tea. Lots of restaurants would often have iced lemon tea, which is also sweetened but with some squeezed lemon.

I'm from Ireland. Asking for tea in a restaurant will usually get you a cup of English breakfast tea or an Irish variant of from a brand like Lyons, Barry's, Bewley's, or Fallon's. Its a slightly different flavor to typical English breakfast tea, sometimes called Irish breakfast tea.

You would usually get a small pot of hot tea, with a cup, a small jug of milk and some sachets of sugar. Most people take milk and the equivalent of 2 tea spoons of sugar.

Sometimes I prefer coffee, but if I dont feel well or am stressed, I tend to reach for this kind of tea since that's what I grew up with.

In Israel you'll get a cup of hot water and teabags to choose from.

Hot water with peppermint is also a popular option as well as sweet tea.

NJ here. If you ask for just "tea," it usually means hot tea. You'll then be asked for the usual add-ons, milk, lemon, so on. It's usually black tea, some places will have others, and they'll ask if you just ask for tea. Unless you say "iced," "unsweet", "sweet", or any flavors they might have, they'll usually assume hot tea.

Middle East, tea ranges from Moroccan tea to the west to Chai in the east. If you ask for just tea (without specifying):
Gulf: unsweetened black tea
Egypt and Levant: overly sweet and over steeped black tea (levant usually with mint).
West of Libya: green tea with one or two types of mint.

Here they tend to either ask you if you want green or black tea or bring you a box of lipton with various flavors and let you chose from that.

And 9/10 chance it'll taste moldy AF.

Tea isn't very common here.

South East? Is that like... India? Just say so, why so cryptic? Idk what cities in India NC and VA mean either, just use geographical names, common, can't know every city or province or whatever everywhere around the planet.

Give me the wrong kind.

Either sweet or unsweet but always the one I don't want.

Scotland - you'll get a pot of brewed tea or a cup with a black tea bag in. And some milk.

A nice hot cup of char with a separate little jug of milk and sugar to taste. Oh, and a little spoon. Lovely

I get black tea, cream, and sugar. Hot.

For “nicer” restaurants, the universal sweet tea boundary seems to be precisely at the NC/VA border.

Interesting. I'm driving from Raleigh to Northern VA tomorrow with lunch in Farmville, VA. I'll have to test this theory. Can corroborate that NC "tea" is super sweet iced tea.

Edit: Hmm, so I asked for tea in Farmville, VA and the waitress asked me "sweetened or unsweetened". We told her what was up and she admitted that she was from further north in Virginia, but she had learned to ask while working there. Where she was from, tea would be unsweetened unless specified.

So ... Maybe there is a bit of a DMZ in Virginia before you fully cross into unsweetened territory?