Roman Vass (@romanryliee), a Phoenix bartender, musician, and exercise enthusiast, says a newly legal 21-year-old ordered a round of green tea shots. Then, he took one sip and tried to send them back—because they didn’t taste like green tea.
Green tea shots: ‘Why is it, like, sour?’
According to Vass, the order starts easy. “Hey, can I have a couple green tea shots?” the customer asks. Vass makes them and slides them over. “Here you go.” “Thanks.”
Then, the complaint. “This doesn’t taste like green tea,” the customer says. Vass’s reply is the whole joke: “Well, it’s not.”
Here’s why: a green tea shot is Irish whiskey, peach schnapps, and sour mix with a splash of lemon-lime soda. So, the name is about the color; there’s no tea in the glass.
But the customer won’t let it go. In Vass’s account, the customer tells him to “try it.”
“Nope. I don’t know you, and I’m good,” he says he responded. “I don’t like green tea shots.”
The customer presses him: “Why is it, like, sour?”
What follows is the part that carried the video: “Did you give me a fake? Are you using a fake ID,” Vass says, “or were you just born 21 years old and this is your first time at a bar?”
The customer looks for an exit: “Can you just take that off the bill?”
Vass doesn’t move. “That’s what you ordered, and I made it correctly.” Refund denied.
‘Just get me a double shot of Tito’s’
Some people aren’t impressed with the shots. “Green tea shots are like the least heinous shots to take,” one wrote. Another person said, “Being offended by the flavor of a green tea shot is like being overwhelmed by the flavor of a La Croix.”
But one bartender plays it fast and loose, getting right to the point. “I’m a bartender. I hate when people ask what I’ll do a shot of and then get shocked when I just say whiskey,” she said. “Like, sorry, have I missed the point of a shot?? Is it not to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible??? I don’t see it as an opportunity for flavor. That’s what cocktails are for.”
There’s No Tea In It
The confusion is common enough to be a standing bar joke. A green tea shot holds “about as much actual tea as a Long Island Iced Tea,” Tasting Table notes—green by color, not by ingredient. The actual recipe is as follows, per liquor.com:
- 1/2 oz Irish whiskey (usually Jameson)
- 1/2 oz Peach schnapps
- 1/2 oz Sweet and sour mix (which is why it’s sour)
- Splash of lemon-lime soda (like Sprite or 7-Up)
Its history explains how a new drinker gets caught. Chowhound traces the shot to the 2000s and its spread through “Midwestern college bars,” years before TikTok made it a pregame fixture.
Subplot News reached out to Vass for more information. We will update this if he responds.
@romanryliee
