No, the best tea wasn't of the Arizona or TGI Friday's variety, or from anywhere else you or we might have expected. This unexpected winner makes darn good tea.
we visited 10 Kyivan locations, looking for the best example of this perfectly American summer beverage. Our results might surprise you. At least they surprised us.
From the Bottom Up
The Hairy Lemon, our beloved company bar, didn’t do too well. An iced tea should be a cold, naturally-brewed concoction. It can have a touch of lemon, but, as any American southerner will tell you, it certainly doesn’t have to have it, as long as it’s sweet. The Lemon’s tea was cold, and it had some lemon, but there was no sparkle to this championship pretender.
The obviously powdered mix lent the beverage a synthetic flavor, and the color was off – a reddish-brown that made me think the glass, and not the beverage, was colored. Speaking of the color, the Lemon mix seemed to be packed with a coloring additive that gave some of us heartburn.
Rating: 5/10.
The Mars Cafe in the heart of the downtown once had a reputation as a funky place to sip and sin the night away. Nursing our weak Mars Cafe take on iced tea, we realized that the real sinning was going on behind the bar.
A step up from the Lemon, Mars did use real tea in their version, but it was poorly steeped, came in a tiny glass – the exact opposite of how an iced tea should – and was still warm when served. Given the cost, this was a real bummer.
Rating: 6.
Next up, Yakitoria. Why Japanese? Why not? The Japanese have managed to pull off a number of cool takes on Americana. They do baseball, cars and pop music well, so why not iced tea? This popular chain restaurant (it’s Russian, actually) serves up all kinds of good sushi, but as far as the thirsty members of the Best Of team were concerned, it showed neither creative spirit nor innovation.
The Yakitoria tea was small (most things Japanese tend to be small), and while it was better steeped than the tea at Mars, it was just barely so, and all in all it just wasn’t very refreshing. It made us want chilled sake instead of iced tea.
Rating: 7.
Who was next? Tequila House, where the tea came in tall glasses, and looked fairly refreshing. But once we pulled out the straws and started to gulp down a few swallows of this Mexican iced tea, we wondered where the flavor was. We looked. It was there, in the bottom of the glass along with the rest of the tea mix that hadn’t dissolved. No wonder the drink looked at first more like a Tequila Sunrise. Disappointment reigned.
Rating: 7.
Some Improvements
If anywhere was going to serve the perfect glass of iced tea, surely that ex-pat standard Arizona BBQ, in Podil, was the place. If only.
We’d heard rumors that the iced tea at Arizona was served out of a can. Yes, a can. Luckily enough, the tea was a popular North American brand with, under the circumstances, an appropriate name – Arizona – but given how expensive it was, we were saddened. AZ should be promoting American values like ingenuity and originality rather than shoving a weak corporate product down its customers’ throats. AZ does great summertime cocktails, but if we really want tea out of a can, we’ll have our friends back West ship it.
Rating: 7.5.
Perched atop the Donbass Business Center like the rare jewel that it is, Concord is a restaurant that features some of the finest cuisine – fusion or otherwise – in Kyiv. We of the Best Of team thought it was a cinch that they’d also do a funky, fusion version of iced tea.
But Concord takes a ding to their reputation with their iced tea. They’re certainly busy behind the bar mixing up fabulous cocktails, but this simple standby defies them. Is iced tea too proletarian for Concord? We hope not for long. The tea was cool, but served in a small glass and, when we asked the server for some liquid sugar (otherwise known as simple or bartender’s sugar), she seemed confused. Sugar granules just don’t dissolve well in cold drinks, hon.
Rating: 7.5.
Another ex-pat standard that makes all kinds of great cocktails, and has even won a Kyiv Post Best Of award for its margarita, is TGI Friday’s. This should have been case closed, end of search. We sat down at the bar to watch the bartender mix the drink up and add the ice cubes. Then he asked us if we’d like any simple sugar. We sensed a winner, but the taste test results were lukewarm, just like the tea.
The Friday’s tea, while identical to the Concord tea in every respect, was one third the price, but with nothing else to distinguish it from the stuff served at the bars and restaurants we’d already crossed off, we knew we had to keep looking.
Rating: 8.
The Top Teas
Eric’s Family of restaurants has just opened a little haunt on Tarasa Shevechenka, just outside Viola’s Bierstube. The Fresh Bar is a narrow, brightly lit and colorful place. In a perfect world, it would be filled with bubblegum-chewing teenage girls drinking milkshakes with their boyfriends after school. We went in there late on a weekday night and found the place absolutely deserted.
The Fresh Bar’s fruit tea version of iced tea was a real shocker, coming out of nowhere to claim third place in our survey. It came in a tall glass, garnished by an orange wedge and a candied green cherry and clogged with lots of ice. That was some tea, and as cheap as anyone could ask for.
Rating: 8.5.
Then, in a clubbing mood, we hit the Caribbean Club, a sultry, sweaty dance hall where an iced tea would fit right in, next to the bottle of Corona garnished with a wedge of lime. The Club’s bartenders sweat as much as any of the club’s professional costumed dancers, and they make darn good iced tea, too. A big mug full of ice cold and excellent tea came our way, and for the same price as a mug of draught beer. The CC iced tea proved a great alternative to the local suds, and as the members of the Best Of team know, tea is better in the heat than alcohol.
Rating: 9.
Go Moroccan
This is where Georgia Girl enters the picture.
Georgia Girl and her husband, former Kyiv residents, had been visiting, and invited some of us to join them at Marrakesh, Podil’s new Moroccan restaurant. Georgia Girl had been with us all along, tasting teas, and at Marrakesh we found her presiding over a tall glass of the stuff, with straws poking out of it at every angle and covered with beads of condensation. “Try this,” she said. “This one’s the winner.”
She was right. As we ordered, and then tasted our own glasses of this remarkable tea, she extolled its perfectly balanced flavor, its great lemony harmony, its exotic goodness – and its size, which was huge.
Turns out you can choose from a number of exotic tea varieties here, and though the iced tea is a bit more expensive than it is at some of the other restaurants, it’s the hands-down winner.
Rating: 9.5.
Marrakesh
24 Sahaidachnoho, 494-0494.
Daily from 11 a.m. till the last customer.
English menu: Yes.
English-speaking staff: Yes.
