In most restaurants in Taiwan there is free tea and soup. For most places the quality isn't anything to really write home about, but for a few they really go out of their way to make their tea or soup very good, as a way of attracting customers.
As you can see from the picture it's self service. Taiwan doesn't have service fee or tips given to the staff. On the one hand this means that service is generally quite poor, but on the other hand i quite enjoy being able to get things myself.
Some people do take a bit advantage of the system though. usually there are cups for the tea and plastic bags for the soup when getting the food to go. Yes they put scalding hot soup into plastic bags. Anyway, some people put the tea into the huge soup bags. But considering I'm not a fan of the the watery soup thus never get it, I think it balances out so other people can take advantage of it.
In the picture above is the normal selection of what you get in restaurants, although most only have one of these choices available. On the far right is black tea with milk. The center is green tea, usually not sweetened. On the left is "winter melon" tea. If you know what a winter melon is, you are a better person than I, i had to look it up. Even though it looks like squash, this drink is actually quite sweet and my favorite of the three.
This particular restaurant and I also have quite a history. Some of you may remember a story I wrote many years about about getting roped into having lunch with the younger cousin of a friend, and the restaurant workers poisoning me on purpose because they thought I was some dirty guy. Well this is that same restaurant. And in fact on this day I went there with a friend who while quite old, looks like a child, to see if they would try to poison me again, but this time I was safe.
