There is this Russian trivia show that N and I adore and always watch. The show consists of very intelligent, highly educated people answering questions sent in by members of the Russian – speaking audience from all over the world. The show was inherited from the Soviet times and went through some very curious transformations as it adapted itself to historic developments.
For instance, back in the USSR, the prizes were books because books were very hard to get and it was prestigious to have them even if you weren’t a reader. And on that show, everybody was a reader, of course.
In the 1990s, during the bandit wars, the show acquired a very dark and heavy tone. Books disappeared, and the show turned into a high-stakes casino of sorts where members of the educated class enacted their terror of wild capitalism.
Todat, the prizes are always and only large sums of money but everybody is used to capitalism now and the environment around money is much calmer.
But other places were transforming, too. For instance, one of the show’s traditions is a short break during which the players are served, in a very majestic way, “traditional English tea.” Aside from the obvious goal of product placement, this is a way of borrowing some of the intellectual cachet that “traditional English” things possess.
For years, the brand of the “traditional English tea” served was Pickwick. But “traditional English” is as likely to transform as “traditional” anything else. A few years ago, the “traditional English Pickwick” changed into “the traditional English tea Ahmad.”
At first, there was a lot of alarmism among the show’s fans. Ahmad is displacing Pickwick! What’s next, Mohammed instead of Nelson? This is what England has come to! The horror, the horror! But then it turned out that Ahmad was actually a very good tea and that, unlike the horribly tasting Pickwick, it was even enjoyable to drink. So the panic subsided. And now every self-respecting “Russian” restaurant in the US carries Ahmad because immigrants love the show and are eager to be part of the new traditions of their old country by way of the traditional English tea.
I remembered the story because, like a typical Russian – speaking immigrant, I’m drinking my Ahmad right now and checking the program to see when the new episode of my old Soviet show will be aired.
Clarissa's Blog 
When I had Russia tv one on my cable I remember clicking past a weird game show type thing with a big roulette well and a moustachioed announcer (I also seem to remember stuffed animals). Is it that? I remember wondering what it was but couldn’t understand enough to get into it.
I remember seeing parts of Zhdi menja (wait for me) not that I could understand it but the over the top emotionalism was kind of engrossing.
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The mustachioed fellow is from another show. HUGELY popular. But it’s more mass-market than I can stand. In my show, you don’t see the announcer. He’s hidden from view, and everybody calls him “Sir” (in Russian.)
And Zhdi menja is a show I don’t watch at all because the whole premise is alien to me.
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I discovered Ahmad tea a few years ago in a Russian store here in Israel and since that day it has been the only brand of English tea that I buy and drink. I didn’t realize the tea had such an interesting history within the Russian speaking community.
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It’s good, eh? And with the story, it’s even better. 🙂
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I’ve never been much for hot tea having been brought up on the sugary tea flavored drink known as iced tea but if a person insists on drinking hot tea then Ahmad is pretty good (esp the Earl Grey).
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The sweet Southern iced tea is fantastic. . . Especially in this climate.
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Ahmad is fairly decent tea, but I wouldn’t consider it amazing for “high tea”.
I prefer TWG from Singapore for “high tea”, and as far as a “builder’s cup” goes, I prefer tea from the Cornish Tea Company.
Between those points, I enjoy traditional black teas from The East India Company (which is why I sent you toward Conduit Street in London, BTW), as well as the traditional teas from the tea room at Harrods’ food hall. Whittard of Chelsea I also like, especially the Russian Caravan and Imperial Spice blends, which I tend to keep stocked. (There’s a location on the High Street near Christ Church in Oxford that you may have walked past without realising what it was.)
The Prince of Wales’s Duchy Teas also do fairly well — I enjoy the fair trade organic Earl Grey that I can pick up at Waitrose. However, if I’m inside a Waitrose, I’d rather buy Tregothnan’s Cornwall-grown “GREAT” British tea, which is actually very, very good (and possibly even very, very great, even if we try to avoid such hyperbole).
Right now I’m stuck in the United States for a while, so I’m having to cope with what I can get from the “British section” of various grocers. PG Tips, Typhoo, Tetley, and so forth typically qualify as “builder’s teas”, although one near me does have Taylor’s of Harrogate teas. (Their Yorkshire Gold tea, however, qualifies as an upmarket “builder’s tea”.)
If you are stuck with Ahmad tea, I suggest using more than one tea bag — for my very large cup (which others insist is a soup tureen with a handle), I need three of their tea bags to make a “proppa cuppa” … 🙂
So there you have it — those are my tea suggestions.
Tune in next time when I make my rounds (pun intended) through British biscuit offerings …
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Tea has come into fashion in North America. There are very fancy and expensive tea shops everywhere, even in the impoverished St Louis. People are actually learning methods of brewing teas and ditching the tea bags. We are getting civilized over here! 🙂
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From the time I was seven years old, until I went away to University, I had to fix my mother cups of tea from morning until night. This is in keeping with the Cantonese Han Chinese who find it useful to employ their children in small household tasks when they can do so without hurting themselves or others.
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I travel with tea bags, mostly because I appear to have misplaced the nicely compact and useful German-made tea brewer I picked up at Whittard’s a few years ago. 🙂
Generally when we experience “American tea”, we’re given a puny, pathetic bag of slightly off Orange Pekoe black tea blend that we’re supposed to regard as the necessary start to a proper cup of tea. During my wandering years ago, it took a while to understand that what are considered “family sized” tea bags in America are what we tend to think of as “bog standard” for individuals.
Then there’s the horror of Teavana, with an uninteresting bergamot in their Earl Grey, assuming you don’t make the mistake of choosing their Earl Grey blend that’s “improved” with marigold petals …
Whatever you do, don’t get this wretched stuff iced unless you enjoy trying to dissolve seventeen packets of sugar into it just so you can get it down. 🙂
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“Whatever you do, don’t get this wretched stuff iced unless you enjoy trying to dissolve seventeen packets of sugar into it just so you can get it down.”
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Adding neroli to bergamot makes an incredibly intense Earl Grey, BTW.
http://www.eicfinefoods.com/products/the-staunton-earl-grey-black-tea-caddy-125g/
Once you’ve tried it, you’ll only want intensely flavoured and aromatic Earl Grey from then on.
I’ve found a tea blender in Portland, Oregon who makes a suitably strong Earl Grey for the American market, but I figure that once he gets tired of the louche denizens of Portland, he’ll be promptly snaffled up by some upwardly aspiring Midlands tea manufacturer, and that will be the end of that. 🙂
BTW, there were two places I’d pointed you toward “for your own good” in London, and you didn’t go to either of them …
One of them was East India Company on Conduit Street, for reasons that should now seem abundantly obvious.
The other was the Wellcome Library, which has a separate collection on “sexology” which might have proved a far more seductive place for research than the Freud Museum.
http://wellcomecollection.org/institute-sexology
Drop in when you’re back in London — you can probably use your driving licence with residence address on it and your university faculty ID card to gain a library membership in short order …
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I was only in London for a couple of days, so I had to skip many interesting places. Of course, the city deserves of a greater attention. I didn’t even get to the Freud Museum, even though it was next door to my hotel. 😦
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Is it the show “Chto? Gde? Kogda?”
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If so, it’s on youtube:
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“Is it the show “Chto? Gde? Kogda?”
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