Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

How little people know! A simple filtration, carbonation and chilling unit for a small restaurant that will take the crap out of your water and leave it fresh tasting with all of its minerals intact costs about $500 a month (with additional charges for bottles or carafes beyond a certain amount that are supplied with the unit). The unit cost for a restaurant that sells 500 bottles a month will be a dollar per bottle, and this does not include the labor involved in washing and sanitizing the bottles or carafes for reuse, for storing the bottles ready for use and for filling the bottles on demand (which takes about 15 seconds per bottle). Additionally there is the space that the unit will take up (about the size of a two group espresso machine), the space that the bottles will take up, the cost of UV bulb replacement, the cost of CO2 for carbonation and the cost for electricity to chill the water.

IN view of the above the idea that this, because it is merely water, should come free is absurd and is the product of a culture that still has not come to grips with the precious and tenuous nature of our relationships with the environment and each other. On the other hand, no establishemnt should deny a patron a glass of filthy and unhealthy tap water if that is the patron's preference.

Hmmmm....is it worth the effort taking on spsolomon? As regards Sotohiro's excellent food and keen ability probably not, for even sp, after finally having put his mouth where his pen hastily went first, acknowledges Sotosan's outstanding quality. "Fantistic!" was the word he used.

His going on to make comparisons and his suggesting that there is a great world beyond fantastic doesn't really merit any attention more than to say that he was clearly prejudiced beforehand and emerged, well-fed and presumably content, still as prejudiced as before. Ah, consistency...

Regarding sp's price prejudice I only wish to recall that a fave comedian of mine, Jackie Mason, did a routine wherein Jews got off getting things only when they could be had for under wholesale, whereas Gentiles only got off by paying full price. From Jackie's perspective sp would have to be a Super-Gentile.

Now tomorrow I am off to another fine meal at Soto. It will be fantastic; I have sp's assurance as well as my own past experience. And, based on that experience I can safely say that like as not it will be such that I wont be tempted to compare it to the meal I had at Karuma, for it will be sufficient unto itself--an experience of absolute value, whole, complete and, as such, transportation to a level of being wherein the spirit is exalted in seeing, as God once did, that it was Good.