I usually get sweet tea instead of soda. I think these days most restaurants make it from a concentrate. I find it too sweet.
I always ask the waitress to blend it half and half. Half unsweetened and half sweet. Then it’s just about right. If the beverages are self-serve; I’ll blend it about 1/3 sweet to 2/3 unsweetened. Taste and adjust as needed.
How about you? Is it just right as served, too sweet, or do you drink it unsweetened?
Get out of here, bruh. Unless you’re going to places in the South, the tea is UNSWEET and complete garbage to drink. It’s almost like everyone’s barbecue recipe - it’s a little different place to place, town to town, person to person. For some reason, sweet tea is amazing here anywhere you get it, but if you go to my aunt’s town, it’s full of old people who like to use weird liquid substitute sweeteners and it tastes like ass. I was even in a church’s kitchen once in the town and they had a recipe posted up for how to make the tea “like everyone likes it” and, just from reading the recipe, I could tell it would be the most vile, godawful drink ever - even for people like you who aren’t sweet tea fans.
So, all that said, NO I don’t hahah
I drink iced tea that is no sweetened, as the gods intended.
I got a nasty surprise the first time I ordered ‘iced tea’ in the South. blech Sadly, it seems that sweetened tea has become the default in the PNW in recent years, and I have to specify unsweet tea. 
McDonald’s serves a wonderful iced tea that I usually sweeten lightly to bring out the flavor. Their sweet tea is also delicious, using real sugar, though it’s not nearly cloying enough to be authentic. Half and half is a nice compromise when you are trying to make it easy for the drive-up help.
I live in the south. 
They make and sell really good ice tea here. Typically, Community Tea brand.
I assume the restaurants use a concentrate because the taste is pretty standard from restaurant to another. It would vary in taste if made from scratch.
I agree. Sugar brings out the taste in tea. But, you only need a little. Too much sugar overpowers it.
I order 8 to 12 pounds of Community Coffee at a time. (Speaking of which, I think there’s a 15% off sale right now.) The taste of New Orleans in the Pacific Northwest! 
Actually, I’ve been drinking Arnold Palmers more and more lately. The lemonade balances the tea quite well. But when I drink iced tea, I want it Texas Sweet.
Up in the Northeast, sweetened ice tea in restaurants is nearly unanimously a raspberry flavored concoction. It varies from almost sweet enough to not sweet at all.
Sweet now looks wrong to me. I want to respell it sweat… but I forceably restrained myself.
Did you put sugar in it? Then it’s too sweet. If I wanted sugar water, I’d drink soda. (Which I often do and I often do).
I have lived in the south all my life, and have eaten out in A LOT of restaurants for many years. In my experience, all restaurant tea is too sweet for my liking, so I drink it unsweetened. I prefer sweet tea, but with the typical way it’s brewed, I am happy with a mxture of sweet/unsweetened with no more than 1/4 sweet.
However, I am also mindful of the fact that might be a hassle for some wait staffers, so I normally just drink it straight, and only those few that I have really good relationships with I’ll let know how I really like it.
I need it unsweetened. Sweet tea is disgusting. Slightly sweetened iced tea is okay.
I dislike southern-style Sweet Tea. But I love very sweet Thai Iced Teas. Go figure.
Sometimes we have some cans of AriZona iced tea at home and I’ll drink one of those if I’m in the mood for some sugar water. Likewise, if I’m at home and there’s a pot of tea that has gone cold I have no qualms about drinking cold unsweetened tea. I probably wouldn’t order an iced tea in a restaurant unless it was some kind of raspberry-peach-cran-apple-whatever mixture, and probably not even then; I usually just drink water with my restaurant meals, or maybe a beer.
On the two or three occasions I’ve tried unsweetened iced tea in a restaurant, I didn’t like it; on each occasion it was too strong for my taste. (I like moderately weak tea.)
I voted for “I don’t drink iced tea” because there was no option “I rarely drink iced tea”.
Can’t stand what passes for standard “sweet” these days, it’s way too sweet for my taste. And too often has fruity, often rasperberry, additions. In a sit-down restaurant I order unsweetened and add just a touch of sugar. At a place like McDonald’s its 1/3 or 1/4 sweet and the rest unsweetened.
I almost always will drink unsweetened tea even though I actually prefer a tiny bit of sweetness. Most sweet tea have way too much sugar in them for my taste. When I’m at home and I brew up a pitcher of tea then I’ll add about a tablespoon of honey to a two-liter batch of it to make just about right. When I’m out and about and dealing with a self service drink station then I’ll usually either drink plain unsweet or I’ll add a splash of lemonade to it.
Not a hint of sweetness and some lemon is the only way I drink it.
Can’t stand the stuff myself. The only cold tea I like is iced chai.
I’ve never worked at a restaurant that used concentrate. Making tea involved preparing a slurry of sugar and hot water, then dumping it into the container that the tea (always Lipton) would be brewed in.
Down here, your standard choices are as follows:
Everything defaults to sweet, though. If you’re at a place where the default tea is some sort of raspberry (or other fruity) concoction, I don’t know where you are but it ain’t the standard south.
Until fairly recently, standard iced tea in Houston restaurants was unsweetened. With free refills, of course.
Is sweet more of a Deep South thing? There’s a bit of an overlap but Texas is not fully Deep South–thankfully.
Most restaurants offer a sweet tea option now. Some of the “hip” places love it–the same places that regard chicken fried steak as The Latest Thing.
Unsweetened for me. Preferably Luzianne.…
Didn’t vote. You didn’t put Not Sweet Enough as one of the choices.
Why yes, I AM from the south.
Agreed, in Texas for most of my life, you ordered tea, you got a glass of unsweetened brewed tea. With a slice of lemon, if you were lucky. I was in Kerrville a few weeks ago, and all of a sudden you have a choice.
Fine, whatever, you want to drink that syrupy slop, go ahead, but keep that damned sugar bowl away from me and mine. I ain’t no hummingbird looking for sugar water.