My pal Clive forwarded this on. I don't actually remember SF having noticeably good tap water, like Chicago has, and NYC used to have. (Gross mentions how good NYC tap water is, but I have pals who have talked ab out how the quality has gone down in the last decade ot so.)
Evian Criminals
The new snob appeal of tap water.
By Daniel Gross
In March, the San Francisco Chronicle spotted a hot new food trend in the Bay Area. Instead of offering diners a choice of still or sparkling bottled water with their (inevitably) locally grown delectables, trendoid restaurants such as Incanto, Poggio, and Nopa now offer glorified tap water. Sustainable-dining pioneer Chez Panisse has also joined the crowd, tossing Santa Lucia overboard for filtered municipal water, carbonated on-site. The reason: It takes a lot of energy to create a bottle of water and ship it from Europe to California. And so of-the-moment bistros can boost their enviro cred by giving away tap water instead of selling promiscuously marked-up bottled water. "Our whole goal of sustainability means using as little energy as we have to," Mike Kossa-Rienzi, general manager of Chez Panisse, told the Chronicle. "Shipping bottles of water from Italy doesn't make sense."
After reading the whole thing, Gross makes some interesting points, but also conflates Perrier and Pellegrino (which are sparkling waters) with Evian (a mineral water) with the "plastic bottles" of Dasani and Aqufina and so on. The carbonated waters are competing with pop and sports drinks, rather than tap water. I've certainly ordered a bottle of Pellegrino for the table, over and above glasses of ice water.
And Perrier is available in plastic bottles, just like Coke.
The SF restaurants he mentions in his lead are carbonating the tap water themselves, which at least explains how they can charge for it. but I'll bet tons of diners just ask for glasses of ice water.
