Actually, my assumption was that it would be *liquid *drink mix, like the Coke and Sprite - concentrated tea and sugar and whatnot. Like this stuff. And I know from making iced tea and Sweet Tea at home that if you leave it out on the counter, it molds in minutes. (Well, okay, not minutes, but hours is not an exaggeration.) So I’d expect a liquid concentrate to need some sort of preservative effort. Of course, I could be wrong about that, but I wasn’t thinking powder at all.
We’ve done variants of this thread over the years and whenever I see one I’m always glad I live in Milwaukee. Most of the things I’ve seen mentioned in here I think “What do you mean you don’t have _____?”
Of course, it seems like this type of thread is normally about not being able to find a good German restaurant in city X, but we still have a bunch of them in Milwaukee.
I’d like to ask a question that’s going to show my ignorance…are other cities not as culturally diverse? In Milwaukee we have a huge Russian population, a huge Mexican population, a huge Jewish population, a huge Italian population, a good sized Serbian population and a good sized Polish population. I grew up with this being normal. Not only that, but I just assumed all the associated restaurants that went along with all the ethnicity was normal for any big city as well. But then I’ll see a thread about not being able to find a German restaurant in Sacramento and it always surprises me.
Since I’m in the sticks, two hours away from a city big enough to have a mall, the list is long. Our ethnic choices are two unremarkable Mexican places and two Chinese places, one of which is actually pretty damn good and the other of which is a cheap and kind of crappy buffet that makes some credible sushi. (Good enough to get me to my next real fix, anyway.*)
It’s kind of remarkable sometimes what we can get. We have a local supermarket that recently expanded and now goes out of its way to stock a lot of ethnic and upscale ingredients, not to mention a surprisingly good selection of seafood. As another foodie friend put it, “it’s almost like living in civilization”.
- The aforementioned nearest small city, Lexington, is sort of overrun with good sushi joints. The story is that some of them opened up to cater to execs from the nearby Toyota plant and it caught on, well before it became as generally popular as it is now.
When I worked there, we brewed the unsweetened tea as needed, and I’m pretty sure they still do, so there’s that… but as anal as McDonald’s is about consistency, I can see where they might brew a concentrate and distribute that to make sure every batch has the consistent amount of sugar. I can possibly see that. But what’s not fresh about it? What’s the difference if I brew sun tea over two days outside, and then drink it over the next five days, is that fresh iced tea, and McDonald’s is not?
If the concentration of sugar is high enough in a tea, water, and sugar “syrup” the only “preservation” you need is possibly refrigeration and a sterile sealed container.
No, yours isn’t fresh either. Fresh tea is brewed and drunk the same day. Also, you should know that sun tea is more susceptible to bacterial growth than tea brewed with actual boiling water.
There’s nothing wrong with the concentrate method–plenty of people do this for convenience in their own homes–but it’s not the best.
My last experience with McD’s tea-makin’ is from 2006, but even then it was brewed in-store. Tea bags and sugar just aren’t that expensive. During the height of summer, we couldn’t keep an entire urn around for more than 2 or 3 hours, I imagine with all the 99c deals around, it might be even shorter now.
I know I’ve seen the BIB tea concentrate before, dispensed from the soda fountain, but normally those are branded. All I can think of is Lipton Brisk (also in lemon and raspberry flavors), but there are probably more.
Decent pizza in DC.
I grew up near a rural dairy, and loved their cheese curds. I CANNOT find any cheese curds now that I’ve moved to the “big” city - Sacramento, CA. Our area is chock-full of dairy farms, but no one seems to retail curds 
Also, brisket. I’ve only ever been able to find it as corned beef. I’m sure I could special order it with the butcher, but I wish it was on normal sale-rotation.
If you’re ever down near Oakdale, Oakdale Cheese sells curds.
Moroni Bros in Petworth has good brick oven pizza, so does Red Rocks in Columbia Heights and there is another good brick oven place in Takoma Park across from the food co-op. What you cant’ get is good cheap pizza in DC.
Seattle. No good German food, and Scandinavian places have been whittled away by the poor economy.
I make up for it by adding sauerkraut to my sushi 
I can’t get Drake’s cakes here (Cincinnati), so no Ring Dings, Yodels (Hostess Ho-Hos are close), Yankee Doodles or Devil Dogs. :mad:
Living in a farm town means that there are lots of good raw materials - meats, vegetables, fresh dairy products - but not a lot of good (prepared) food. I can’t get bagels, cheese other than American, a real hoagie, or fresh seafood here in the boonies.
However, our dinors here have great breakfasts (sans bagels)!
My daughter moved to Greensboro, NC and says she’s having trouble finding sauerkraut, or anyone who knows what it is. She had a pregnancy meltdown in the grocery store while searching for some and when the clerk couldn’t help her find what she wanted, she had to ask them to find the oldest employee in the store, who managed to find two cans of sauerkraut for her…but no fresh, bagged sauerkraut like we have here. It’s not the same.
What is the best when it comes to sweet tea? Who can actually discern any nuances of the essentail oils and acids that are important and pronounced in fresh hot tea but ever diminishing in the cooled process of iced tea, and even further then, when it is practically viscous with a tooth torturing amount of sugar that you can stand a spoon in. No, I say that the slow steeping process of sun tea lets one enjoy the true flavors of tea, if one must drink it cold.
Bakery goods. Cakes, pies, and cookies. French bread. Deli meats other than shaved ham and turkey loaf stuff. There are no bakeries within 50 miles or so, unless you count the Wal-Mart supermarket and I don’t. When I go to Chicago I marvel at the groceries where I can buy rare roast beef in the deli section, or French bread that’s not just white bread in a different shape.
Seriously? Because if Smoke’s isn’t good poutine, I’m in very sad shape should I find good poutine.
Also, there is a lack of good Mexican or Tex Mex in Toronto. About the only thing I have found to be lacking in this city.
NYC has excellent Mexican food but no Tex-Mex that I’ve found. There is also a lack of decent chicken fried steak. About half a dozen places in the city sell chicken fried steak but it isn’t as good as the stuff you get in the south.
I’m in Taipei at the moment, and not that this surprises me at all but I can’t find anything with decent cheese here. There’s either the Kraft slices type stuff you get vacuum-packed at a supermarket or on your fast food, or you can get a plate of Gouda for like $6 at a fancy French place, which is absurd.