‘Tea’ is just something you learn not to ask for. You can’t get sweet tea North of the Mason-Dixon, nor West of the Mississippi, whereas in the South, you could get tarred and feathered for serving tea unsweetened as a default. ‘Hot tea’ and ‘iced tea’ come under the same category.

But I would like to announce to the world, that ‘plain black tea’ does not include Earl Grey :Þ

I’m Canadian and Neil is half-British; we both come from fairly serious tea cultures. Our experience in the evolution of American tea service has been:

• For years you couldn’t get (hot) tea in restaurants at all, although in the south you can consistently find “sweet” tea, what we’d call “iced tea” in Canada, and which has roughly the glycemic index of maple syrup.
• The American restaurant industry started waking up to tea and began serving paper packets of Lipton’s (what is sold here is known as “shop floor sweepings” in serious tea-drinking parts of the world), and the 70′s glass beaker of hot-ish water that’s been strained through a used coffee filter. Lipton-mocha seems to be holding strong as the most common version of tea in much of the country.
• The proliferation of health-benefit-touting articles about green tea spurred a growing number of non-Asian restaurants to include green tea in their beverage list. This is still a bigger city / more cosmpolitan restaurant offering; you’re not going to find green tea at your local chicken and waffle joint.
• Much more recently, restaurant supply companies must have decided there was money to be made in premium teas, because now in medium-grade restaurants, tea is served like you are purchasing a cigar: an embossed wooden box is brought to your table for you to make your selection of over-packaged tea bags that are available for a fraction of the cost in your local grocery store. Ironically, the tea-midor usually includes everything /except/ black tea, and if my husband it looking for a simple cup of black tea, the server goes back to the kitchen to retrieve a bedraggled Lipton’s bag from behind a cabinet for him.

I find that in the US tea drinkers are grossly misunderstood as much as forgotten, at least in our experience.

We have frequently had the experience of a “helpful” server bringing the milk my husband has requested for his tea, as well as a mug of hot water with a slice of lemon included. (I believe this may be the generation for whom home ec budgets were slashed, because the basic chemistry of dairy+citric acid clearly escapes them.)

We don’t have the budget for bed and breakfasts on this trip, alas, but I have really enjoyed staying in them in the past, too.