Posted on 03/21/2007 6:16:54 PM PDT by SmithL
At a small but growing number of sustainably inclined Bay Area restaurants, bottled water has become as much of an outcast as farmed salmon and out-of-season tomatoes. Instead of bottled water, diners now are served free carafes of -- gasp! -- tap water. It's filtered and comes still or sparkling, fizzed up by a soda-fountain-style carbonating machine.
Incanto, in San Francisco's Noe Valley, and Poggio, in Sausalito, pioneered the trend four years ago. But for several years, no other restaurants wanted to give up popular -- and profitable -- bottled water.
Then Nopa, the San Francisco North of Panhandle hot spot, took the plunge when it opened last summer. And so did Ici, the Berkeley ice cream boutique.
And now, Chez Panisse, the godmother of the sustainability movement, is jumping on board, serving East Bay MUD's finest, filtered and bubbly in carafes approved by Alice Waters herself.
"Our whole goal of sustainability means using as little energy as we have to. Shipping bottles of water from Italy doesn't make sense," says Mike Kossa-Rienzi, general manager of Chez Panisse. Management hopes to complete the switch from Santa Lucia acqua con gaz to house-made sparkling water this week at both the restaurant and upstairs cafe. Chez Panisse stopped offering bottled still water last summer.
At Nopa, "Our goal is to be local,'' says co-owner Jeff Hanak. "We can't do it with a lot of things, like Scotch, but we try to do it with the things we can."
Water is fundamental, and it used to be that the questions about it, at least in restaurants, were as simple as "still or sparkling?"
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
My husband installed an RO system in our home at a fraction of the cost if professionally installed systems....the water is fantastic!!!!
http://www.airwaterice.com/
Interesting tidbit in the article about how a decent amount of bottled water exported to suckers in other countries comes right out of the U.S. municipal water system, leaving just a little less for us.
Uh, its also known as "seltzer." We've been drinking it in the NY area for years.
i have village water but ALL my drinking/coffee/cooking water comes from a hillside spring about five miles away... runs all year and never freezes.
The taxpayers have been paying for safe clean water for years. But don't worry the gov't will keep charging us to rip us off any way they can.
just nutty....
On a similar note, my favorite episode of Penn & Tellers BS was when they took over an upscale restaurant and presented customers with a "water list". The waters were form exotic locales like the slopes of Kilimanjaro and Amazon rain forest and came in fancy looking bottles at fancy prices. The customers tasted the waters and commented on how wonderful they were compared to the water they usually drank and noted distinctions... "this one is a little flinty" and "a taste a note of acidity". Imagine their faces when they were told that all the bottles had been filled in the back with municipal water from a garden hose.
Ya had to love it.
It wasn't the magic mushrooms; these irresponsible restaurateurs polluted his precious bodily fluids!
I guess the market for pure and natural water is gone forever.
There's just not enough money in it anymore...
We now have to pay for pure and natural water instead.
What does the tap fee cost as a portion of the cost of the pure and natural drink?
"Uh, its also known as "seltzer." We've been drinking it in the NY area for years."
OK, history lesson for you NY'ers.
A little milk, a couple of teaspoons of U-BET chocolate syrup, put the spoon over the glass and pump in some seltzer, being careful to run it over the spoon, lest your mixture spill over the glass and onto the table, floor, walls.
Stir and serve with a big salty pretzel rod.
What am I?
An old soda jerk?
Wow, San Francisco apparently thinks it's in Europe. All the restaurants there do the same thing, and I found it annoying when I was over there. Around here *all* the restaurants serve ordinary tap water, and if they asked "sparkling or still" they would get a really strange look from their customer.
It's interesting that here in LA the illegals never drink tap water having learned never to trust it in the backwater villages they came from. They think our water is as bad as the untreated polluted stuff back home.
They buy water from the machines outside the grocery stores. Basically city water that is filtered.
Regards.
An Egg Cream!!
Judging from the distinct lack of poultry and dairy products, I'd have to say that's an egg cream, Andy.
Egg Cream. Two best in the world are at Hinsch's in Brooklyn and Eisenberg's near the flatiron building.
What the heck does that mean?
More politically correct than people like you and me.
Disani is ALL local tap water.
Even the foreign brand names are not necessarily from abroad. It may be a mix beause the law allows a degree of mixing and still having the label.
(think Wolfgang Puck frozen exotic pizzas that LITERALLY has a drop of tomato sauce to comply with the legalitis to be defined as a frozen pizza. LITERALLY a DROP.)
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