Comments on: Is consuming bottled water in restaurants anything other than snobbery?

Question: Is consuming bottled water in restaurants anything other than snobbery?

Dragonness — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:08:33 -0800

When should I order bottled water in a restaurant?

I drink tap water at home and generally taste no difference between chilled bottled and chilled tap. What would justify ordering bottled water in a restaurant, say, in New York City (ie. somewhere that has tap water known to be safe)?

By: grouse

grouse — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:13:49 -0800

When you want sparkling water or water with a particular flavor.

By: Piano Raptor

Piano Raptor — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:14:27 -0800

I lived in New York and worked in Manhatten for a year and never ordered bottled; always ordered tap. Most of my local friends did the same.

By: J. Wilson

J. Wilson — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:14:43 -0800

When you want sparkling water.

By: Dragonness

Dragonness — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:16:09 -0800

Good point on the sparkling.

On the flavour: I don't recall ever being given a choice of brands of bottled water.

By: pla

pla — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:16:15 -0800

When should I order bottled water in a restaurant?

When in a place known for having completely undrinkable water - Mexico, Moscow, etc.

Other than that... Don't waste your money.

/ On preview, also what grouse said - If you want flavored water, cool, go ahead and splurge.

By: grouse

grouse — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:21:00 -0800

I don't recall ever being given a choice of brands of bottled water.

I went to a fancy seafood restaurant once where before being given a wine list or menu, I was given a bottled water list with six different options. I declined to purchase any of them. Tap water is just fine in most U.S. cities. If the kind of still water is not specified other than "bottled," then there is zero reason to purchase it. It may, in fact, have just come straight from the municipal water supply into a bottle.

By: strangely stunted trees

strangely stunted trees — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:05:15 -0800

When you're somewhere where the tap water is safe but doesn't taste good. Certainly I wouldn't bother in New York, where the city water tastes excellent, but there are plenty of cities where the tap water tastes brackish or over-chlorinated without actually being unsafe to drink.

On the other hand if your main concern is having sparkling water it's usually cheaper to just order a club soda.

By: nosila

nosila — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:25:28 -0800

Yep...New York City has some of the best tap water in the US. In some places, the tap water tastes like chlorine and/or dirt. That's when you go with bottled.

By: Sweetie Darling

Sweetie Darling — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:28:21 -0800

If you're ever in Jacksonville, FL. Their water has the strongest sulfur taste I've ever experienced.

By: Sassyfras

Sassyfras — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 14:54:18 -0800

Our tap water, here in Arizona, tastes like dirt. gag. so I often order bottled water. but more often than not I'll order tap water with lemon and then I drink the lemon flavored dirt water. mmmmmm.

By: griphus

griphus — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:03:10 -0800

NYC tap water is literally bottled and sold as such. .

By: small_ruminant

small_ruminant — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:10:13 -0800

I was just coming in to say "when you're in Tucson," but I see that Sassyfras beat me to it.

By: theory

theory — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:12:33 -0800

If there's hydrofracking in the area. Also several places I've been in Florida, Texas, and the Southwest have had awful-tasting tap water for a variety of reasons. So bad that it could mar the overall enjoyment of your meal. Sometimes even the fabled NYC tap water can have way too much chlorine taste/smell (although it dissipates after a few minutes).

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:37:42 -0800

It's been 35 years since I was there, but I remember tap water in New Orleans tasting really terrible. I'm sure it was safe, but it came out of the Mississippi, and had a thousand miles worth of sewage dumped into it before it got down to NOLA.

By: ruhroh

ruhroh — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:05:02 -0800

If you were in LA, I would order bottled water over drinking tap water. Something about stealing water from the Colorado River (and fighting over it with AZ) makes it taste ever so disgusting.

By: lollusc

lollusc — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:28:09 -0800

The only time I would order bottled is if I don't think I'll drink all the water while I'm eating, and want to take the rest with me - if I have a long walk or commute to where ever I'm going next. Or very occasionally, if I need a drink bottle for the next few days, I'll order bottled water somewhere and take the empty bottle with me, to be refilled on demand. That only really happens when I'm travelling.

By: gjc

gjc — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:29:27 -0800

If you can't taste the difference between tap and bottled, consider yourself lucky. Because most of us have tap water that tastes terrible.

And yes, New York has absolutely delicious tap water. It's practically sweet tasting!

By: mbarryf

mbarryf — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 07:57:46 -0800

In Europe you almost always get bottled water.
Regarding bottled water flavour, you might want to look at this YouTube video.

By: grouse

grouse — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 08:50:46 -0800

If you were in LA, I would order bottled water over drinking tap water. Something about stealing water from the Colorado River (and fighting over it with AZ) makes it taste ever so disgusting.

What makes you think that bottled water has a superior environmental provenance? It almost certainly does not.

By: snickerdoodle

snickerdoodle — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 15:28:12 -0800

I know people who order it to avoid flourine.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:09:27 -0800

I'm perfectly fine with tap water in restaurants, but when it's Restaurant Week and I'm in a small place, and I'm driving (and thus don't want alcohol), I'll order bottled water just to run up the tab a little bit, because I know the already thin margins get really, really thin during those promotional periods. Other than that, if the local water is good, then it's good enough.

By: ubiquity

ubiquity — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 17:37:15 -0800

In some places in Europe there is a prejudice against tap water. Although the water is perfectly tasty and safe throughout the developed nations, there was a time in recent memory when it wasn't; furthermore, the expectation is that you'll be opening a bottle of something (like wine or beer) anyway. Tap water is often not even offered, and if you ask for water, your waiter will assume you want bottled, either still or with gas. I feel a lot of places here feel (and push the feeling) that bottled water is more European, and therefore more cultured, but as you can see that is a chain of specious reasoning from an obsolete premise. Drink the tap water except for reasons given above.