The Travails of Tea-Drinking

The doctor at UCLA Medical Center could have been more vague, I suppose. Looking at my stomach X-rays, he said, “It’s the hint of an ulcer, the shadow of an ulcer. It might be an ulcer.” I asked what caused it. Summoning up years of medical experience, he replied, “I dunno. Could be be anything.”

I went to Farmers Market and had an espresso, and bingo! The pain came back.

That was 10 years ago. The last coffee for me, the start of a wearying life of drinking tea.

Nothing wrong with tea itself--it tastes fine, with sugar and milk. Real tea, with caffeine in it. Grown in India, I think.

What’s hard to digest is the way people hand it to you.

It Has No Flair

Hot tea is considered odd in America. It’s drunk, but not with brio. Have there been ad campaigns for “Tea--It’s Far Out” or “Tea--It’s Sexy”? I’ve missed them. The image is: old ladies, people with colds, “weak tea,” people from England. (England was sexy for a while in the ‘60s. Till people realized they drank tea.) And then there’s that cold, damp, spent bag on your saucer.

Perhaps it’s just tea’s foreignness, its oddness, that makes drinking it such a hassle around L.A.

Ordering

To ask for “a cup of tea” summons up two contradictory images in the minds of L.A. waiters and food-service clerks: a hot, steaming cup and a tall glass full of ice cubes. Baffled, they invariably respond, “ Hot tea?”

How this is, I do not know. Perhaps a failure in our school system. In my childhood, a cup of tea was the hot kind--period. As ice tea infiltrated and then dominated our society, people forgot about the source beverage.

“ Of course I want hot tea!” I tell them. “Has anyone in the history of the universe ever called ice tea a cup of tea ?”

I know, I should just ask for hot tea to begin with, but I can’t.

It’s like asking for a round tire.

Serving

In Blighty, tea is poured from pitchers whole. That is, it’s tea--nobody hands you a cup of water and tells you to make it yourself. (They do that with coffee.) It’s a dark, brisk brew that has braced that cold, damp (did someone say, “just like a used teabag?”) island for centuries. Drinking it there is neat, in the slang sense. You don’t feel weak or nellyish, you feel like you’ve got your mitt around something substantial.

But not here. From McDonald’s in El Toro to Musso’s in Hollywood, tea is served in a cheesecloth strainer bag, dunked by you in a cup of hot water.

It ain’t sexy, for sure.

A new wrinkle is the ubiquitous coffee den. (Their names, like Java Time and Have a Cup, are ironically like the names of the postwar diners that were torn down to build them.) Staffed by male models and waifs in leotards and turtlenecks, these places, by loudly announcing their hot-beverage preference, equally proclaim they know nothing about tea.

I watched in horror at Starstruck’s in Venice as a gamin guy placed a fistful of tea in an espresso maker and brewed me a cup 10 times too strong. (Very strong tea is not tasty--try brewing one cup with a family-sized bag and you’ll see.) I threw nine-tenths of it out and asked for more hot water. He complied, looking at me with the assurance that comes of knowing nothing, and clearly thinking, “Weirdo.”

But I prevailed. And I was the only tea-drinker in the room whose mouth wasn’t puckered as if he’d been drinking alum.

Choices

Ninety percent of our eating places carry Lipton’s tea. The other 10% (such as Canter’s on Fairfax, and Farmers Market if you don’t specify) vary between “plainer” brands and a classy layout of bags on a tray (the Beverly Hilton, the Sunset Marquis, Ben Frank’s).

English in the bad sense, like those mini-bars in your hotel room where they count up what you’ve drunk in the morning, is the otherwise delightful Good Neighbor in North Hollywood, where you’re given a tray--and then charged for the bags you use!

The Refill

Here I really get hot. The waiters smile as they pour hot water in your teacup. They don’t perceive the unspoken message--”Here’s some more hot water! Redunk your soggy old bag!”--as an insult.

The non-tea-drinkers look on tranquilly. They wouldn’t if that smiling jackal offered to pour hot water in their coffee .

This Teabag Is Exhausted. Give Me Another One.

When you ask for a second bag, you’re on your way to a tea ulcer. Not from the content--my ulcerette is from specific coffee acids--but from aggravation at what comes next.

“That’ll be another 65 cents.”

“What do you mean?”

“For the bag.”

“How much is the second cup of coffee?”

“It’s free. There’s no bag.”

“That bag costs five cents. Do you get your coffee free?”

“No, our customers do. Say, I see why you don’t drink coffee like everyone else. You’re a troublemaker!”

Visiting

When you’re at someone’s house for dinner, you can really disrupt a roomful of coffee-drinkers by asking for tea. Your host will look at you with a mixture of irritation and pity, and bring out the stepladder for a trip up memory lane on their kitchen shelf.

“I’m sure we have some,” they’ll say, grunting and wheezing (even if they’re 20) to dramatize the inconvenience. Spider-webbed jars of chutney and grey plastic bags of rice cakes will come marching out of the dark, but no teabags.

“Are you sure you don’t want coffee?” they’ll say. “We have decaf!”

Rather than begin to discuss the difference between coffee and tea , you’ll say, as all veteran tea-drinkers do, “Don’t bother any more. I have tea bags in the car.” And you’ll go out to your car, start it, and drive to a store and buy some.

I’ve done it a million times.