A colleague of mine recently brought to my attention an issue she had with one of my restaurant iced tea ratings, and I think she has a valid point. The review she had issue with is my four tea bag rating for Habit Burger Grill‘s iced tea, but the same critique can be applied to Rubio’s Coastal Grill.

Let me first defend the original four tea bag review.  First, both Habit Burger and Rubio’s serve fresh brewed black tea, which is usually an automatic three tea bags in my rating system.  Next they serve S&D brand tea which is also served at, my consistent number one fast food restaurant to get iced tea, Chipotle, and might be my favorite brand of tea.  But that is where the compliments of Habit Burger and Rubio’s iced tea stop.

The main problem with their iced tea is a problem that I have complained about many times and detailed in a blog post titled Mixing Flavors.  The basic point is that many restaurants use the same brewing machine for both their plain black iced tea and their flavored tea, which results in their black tea having an unpleasant hint of the flavored tea.  This is very consistently an issue at both Habit Burger and Rubio’s Coastal Grill, but not at Chipotle, because Chipotle only serves plain black tea.

My colleague pointed out that Chick-Fil-A has a more consistent and better tasting tea than Habit Burger, which I definitely agree with, but has the same rating. In the end, the taste of the tea should be a huge determining factor in the overall rating and because of this, I am taking my colleague’s advise and downgrading Habit Burger and Rubio’s iced tea from a four tea bag rating to a three and a half tea bag rating.  I am also upgrading Chick-Fil-A to a four and a half tea bag rating.

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