Stuart Wolfendale

HK Magazine’s food writer complained cautiously that several Soho restaurants had refused to serve him tap water because they said it was it was not safe to drink. Possibly fearing for a loss of hospitality from them, he seems to have been too shy to say outright that they lied shamelessly as well as artlessly. The only reason that the water might not have been safe was if the restaurant had been in an elderly building, indifferently maintained where gunge claded the inside of the water pipes. Sound familiar?

The ruthless persistence with which many restaurants push dressed-up water in bottles is as unconscionable as it is ugly. The mark up on them is fabulous, up there with the alcohol, and proprietors, particularly of those smaller, one-off street level operations with European pretensions, come to rely on a dollar-a-bubble, screw top H20 as a wide stripe down their profit margin.

At the pre-shift waiters briefing, the maitre d’ must remind them, “push the bottled water. Make them feel cheap and dirty if they ask for tap and, remember, take care out there”. That is what many restaurants do. If you reject water which sounds as though it has been personally peed by monks in the Auvergne, the waiters actually pull a face and go mute on you.

Your tap water takes an age to arrive if ever. If you happen not to be drinking alcohol either, that other giddy profit spinner, do not be surprised if they desert the table entirely. And that is when dinner starts getting ugly and waiters can end up in casualtyIn serious hotel dining rooms, water still flows from silver jugs into big stemmed glasses from the moment you are seated.

It is an unpleasant habit that mostly smaller joints have got themselves into and it is a denial of the most basic hospitality that a restaurant can offer- water without question to a thirsty, weary customer. For this, they should be driven from business but since so many of them come and go with the bewildering frequency of the modern British husband anyway, not much effort is required.

Posted in All, Eating generally, Restaurants