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Originally posted by Rudey
And we have tea in the North. I don't know about other states but in NY, you can schedule tea into your schedule and it's a whole frigging affair with all sorts of food and dressing up. I assume by ice tea you just mean hot tea that's chilled with sugar?? How can it be different?
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Oh good Lord, Rudey! You misunderstand, and you illustrate my point beautifully in the process. Of course you have teas (aka tea time and hot teas) in the North, but you don't have
tea, aka iced tea. The reason that tea is unavailable in the North? Because people there assume that it is just "hot tea that's chilled with sugar." No, no. Hot tea that's chilled with sugar is just crappy colored water. And that is what one is likely to get up North if one orders iced tea.
First off, sugar must, I repeat
must be added to the tea while it is brewing or it simply will not taste good at all. Little packets of sugar on the table will not help in the least. And the tea must be brewed properly. In my family we follow the 2-5-2-5 rule: two cups of boiling water with five tea bags and two cups of sugar brewing for five minutes. After it has cooled some, the tea is diluted with cold water to the appropriate strength (yielding about two quarts). It is served over ice, often with lemon or mint.
In a restaurant in the South, tea like this would be prepared in copious amounts every day.
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As for BBQ's I'll stick to burgers and hot dogs 
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Again, you misunderstand. I said barbecue, not BBQs. (Grilling outdoors in the South is called "cooking out" or "grilling out." It is never called "barbecuing/BBQing.") Barbecue is meat that is slow cooked and smoked with an appropriate sauce or rub. In some parts of the South, the meat will be pork, while in others it will be beef. The sauce may be tomato based, vinegar based or even mustard based -- it will not likely be like what the grocery stores have that is called "BBQ sauce." Rubs have a variety of spices. Every region of the South has its own style of barbecue, meaning that when one says "barbecue" in any given area, everyone presumes a particular meat, method of cooking, and style of sauce or rub. A particular set of side dishes -- whether slaw, baked beans, hush puppies, corn bread sticks or whatever -- will also be presumed.
As much as I love hotdogs and hamburgers, they can't hold a candle to good barbecue.