Ordering a cup of tea in Paris is a bit like asking for pastis in a British pub. You probably won't get what you came for, reports the BBC.
The standard response is a glass accompanied by a small pot of water and a bag. Milk, if insisted upon, normally arrives hot.
For generations in France, the search for an acceptable cuppa has been an obsession of expatriated Brits.
Shops are no help. Supermarkets sell boxes of weak "style Anglaise" tea-bags that wouldn't pass muster across the Channel.
People survive by buying on the internet, making the trip to Marks and Spencer (thankfully re-opened), or cadging consignments from visiting friends.
And yet all the while, France has been undergoing a silent tea revolution.
Hard to believe for a country supposedly devoted to the cult of coffee, but today French blends are the toast of tea cognoscenti from Nanjing to New York.
Backed by multi-million-euro advertising, the Paris-based Kusmi tea is a staple of airport duty-frees, and with its new flagship store on the Champs-Elysees has seen turnover multiply by six in the last few years.
Other historic brands like Mariage Freres and Dammann are also fast expanding, selling online and opening stores across the globe.
And inside France a sudden fashion for tea has swept the middle classes. Specialist tea salons are spreading, in Paris and beyond. People take classes to learn how to taste and to serve. Literally hundreds of varieties and blends are now available for sale.
To be clear - French tea is not British tea.
Read more of this report from the BBC.