PrintTap Water Is All the Rage
Alice Waters and her Chez Panisse family aren't the only ones ditching fancy bubbly and spring waters to join the pro-faucet movement. As we reported earlier this year, progressive Bay Area restaurants are risking serious cash flow to help cut the overproduction of plastic bottles and the destructive effects it has on municipal garbage operations. Despite many assumptions that tap water is grimy and laced with fatal chemicals, more and more city officials have reported that municipal water supplies are just as good (and safe) as the fancy bottled stuff, if not better. Sorry, Evian.
Yesterday's Chicago Tribune had a great, well-researched report by national correspondent Stevenson Swanson about the issue, highlighting the work of West Coast mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who have "issued executive orders prohibiting the use of city money to buy bottled water." New York City restaurants like Del Posto (the joint venture between Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich) are following their West Coast lead.
The restaurant is installing about $20,000 in equipment that will turn New York tap water into still and carbonated mineral water. In the process, the restaurant will be sacrificing the hefty profits that come from selling a $2 bottle of water for $6 or $8.
Speaking of money, how much can we, as recovering bottled-water snobs, save? About "$1,400 yearly," according to a New York Times report last week. That's a whole lotta cash. Think of all the juicy burgers we could buy.
Photograph from iStockPhoto.com
About the author: Erin Zimmer, Serious Eats's Washington, D.C., correspondent, is a just-graduated Georgetown gal following her nose about town as Washingtonian magazine's Dining intern and Best Bites blogger. She got her start as the Hoya campus paper's food columnist, and since entering "real person-hood" has ached for her dining hall's omelet station.
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9 Comments:
Well, there are a lot of us (and I would guess the majority of us in the third world) who have been drinking tap water all this time. Personally, I drank tap water until I moved to Boston: only then did it seem like a good idea to spend $1.25 for 12 ozs of water. Living in Puerto Rico on a very limited income (as nearly everyone here does) that would be stupid. Those of you who can afford these restaurants confound us, since most bottled water is simply filtered tap water, and the food is obscenely expensive. $6 - $8 buys a whole meal here, not a bottle of water.
To us, water is water, and Italian, or French, or even Poland Springs (which dried up many years ago) are not options. We drink tap water.
We rely on the community well water that comes to us via electric pumps. I buy Kirkland (the Costco store brand) for those times when we don't have electricity or water, which are relatively frequent. I'm pretty sure it's filtered tap water.
Lou at 5:36PM on 07/23/07
Tap Water? Who makes that? Sounds interesting.
Vitello Tonnato at 11:32PM on 07/23/07
Lou: It's true. I never bought bottled water before moving to NYC—I always saw it as wasteful in energy/resources, not to mention financially. My one indulgence was using the Brita filter pitcher thing. But somehow I got sucked into the habit for a while, even though NYC is supposed to have some of the best drinking water in the country (it's one of those things New Yorkers all tell you when you move here as if it's suppose to make up for the crappy air, lack of green space, and high prices—"hey, at least we have great water"). Anyway, with a little nudging from the gf, I'm back on the Brita and really feel ashamed of how many plastic bottles I've gone through and how much money I wasted during the Volvic years.
Adam Kuban at 11:54PM on 07/23/07
My mum controls the flow of food in our house and as she loves the bottled H20, that's what I drink. I haven't been able to convince her that tap water is okay to drink, but I'll admit our suburban NJ does smell/taste funny sometimes. We put a Brita filter on our faucet for cooking water.
When I eat out at restaurants in NYC, I always get tap.
roboppy at 2:10AM on 07/24/07
Giles Coren, the restaurant critic for the Times (UK), has started to note in his reviews whether he was offered tap water or, if the restaurant only provided bottled, whether it was from a British source. Of course tap water is cheaper for the consumer, but it is also much better for the environment. Think of all of the production that goes into keeping us in bottled water, from all of those plastic bottles to the air miles involved in shipping it around.
Having said that, I did also go through a bottled water phase. Tap water in London doesn't always taste that great, and I love Spa, which tastes exactly like good tap water. Pretty circular logic, but there you go. Luckily those years are now behind me, and I drink tap water all the time.
caley at 5:55AM on 07/24/07
I live in NYC and try to drink tap whenever I can (though it's near-impossible at my kitchenless office), and have since I moved away from my hometown (San Luis Obispo, California), where the water quality is abysmal, and getting worse. I drank it throughout my childhood, but it started actually making my mother sick to her stomach (tons of chlorine, maybe? lots of chemicals and runoff from big agriculture), so my folks drink bottled at home. It drives me crazy when I visit until I try a glass of the tap water - even filtered, it tastes like a swimming pool. Ugh.
producestories at 8:40AM on 07/24/07
I personally love my Columbia, SC tap water - that's all (water) I drink but I do hope everyone keeps drinking Auqafina bottled water - because that my dear friends is Columbia tap water!!!
DebiGirl at 9:31AM on 07/24/07
I love NY tap and I love Paris tap too
I just wish they could make NY tap a little harder (more calcium?) like the Paris stuff...so much better for painting watercolors...
ParisBreakfasts at 10:22AM on 07/24/07
Our tap water tastes and smells of chlorine most of the time, so we installed a filter on the kitchen tap which produces a 'tastier tap water". I drink bottled water at work because my boss supplies it (again, the tap water tastes of chlorine). I keep bottled water on hand for travel, etc. We take the empty bottles to the recycling center nearby. I do think everyone should try to recycle the billions of bottles we use.
amylou61 at 1:00PM on 08/03/07