Spilling the tea on French Truck

Make no mistake, Baton Rouge is a coffee city. But for those among us with a refined palate, an affection for their English ancestry and a preference for the joy that is black tea, there's no better cup being steeped in what's nominally a coffee shop than French Truck's Metropolitan English Breakfast.

Having sampled Earl Grey and English/British Breakfast teas from the Baton Rouge coffee shop gamut, the pyramid bags at French Truck are simply the best—and there's no close second.

My French Truck order du jour: an English Breakfast Latte, half-and-half, one squirt of Splenda Zero. (Note: The Splenda is from my personal stash.)

Why it's the best: Metropolitan Tea Company was started by a Toronto tea master blending out of his own basement decades ago. It's grown into one of the world's largest wholesale luxury tea suppliers, selling strictly to hotels, restaurants and high-end cafes. It's not available at local stores, but you can find it online; fair warning, it's pricey.

Every batch ships from a food-safety-certified facility and is tracked back to the farm and harvest date. And those triangular bags are no pyramid scheme. They're whole leaf, plant-based and roomy enough to actually unfurl, a world away from the dust packed into a standard bag.

That's a lot of pedigree riding on a to-go cup. It's also why French Truck's English Breakfast doesn't taste like an afterthought.