Not all water is created equal. Sometimes it feels like you’re drinking the nectar of the gods, other times like you’ve just downed a glass of chemical waste. There’s hard water, soft water, mineral water, purified water, carbonated water, filtered water – don’t tell us that you’ve never tasted the difference. With all that variety, what if we were to treat H2O like we treat wine? Well, this week one British restaurant has begun to do just that and launched the UK’s first ‘water menu’.
As of today (August 22) diners at La Popote in Cheshire, now have the choice of three different kinds of bottled still water and four different varieties of sparkling water, as well as plain old tap water. The Michelin Guide-listed restaurant’s ‘house’ H2O comes from Crag Spring Water, a brand owned by actual water sommelier Doran Binder.
Binder brought up the idea of water menu to the restaurant’s owners three years ago, but they reportedly laughed it off. Then, they were invited to Binder’s ‘water bar’ in the Peak District where they tried five or six different varieties and, just like wine, paired them with foods like manchego and comté cheeses, chocolate, parma ham and olives. La Popote chef and owner Joseph Rawlings told CNN Business that the experience was ‘mind blowing’.
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The rest of the water menu features water from numerous countries, such as France, Spain and Portugal. Apparently, the difference in flavour is down to the measurement of minerals in the liquid, known as Total Dissolved Solids (TDS).
Binder, the water sommelier, told CNN: ‘Distilled water is zero TDS. It’s brilliant for cleaning windows, brilliant for electrical appliances, brilliant for your car battery – rubbish for the human being.’ Sea water, on the other hand is 30,000-40,000 TDS.
Take the restaurant’s French water on offer – Vichy Celastins. It’s 3,300 TDS and, according to Binder, tastes quite salty at first. But, he said, ‘put it with something that’s quite salty like a Parma ham and they both naturally balance each other out, so the water is not salty anymore and it’s a longer-lasting flavour of the ham in your mouth’.
For something far less salty, guests should go for the 14 TDS Lauretana sparkling mineral water from Italy. The most expensive water on offer is the 3,000 TDS Vidago from Portugal, which costs £19 per bottle. La Popote’s menu says that it has an ‘effervescent’ mouthfeel and ‘delicate, salty’ taste.
Binder told CNN: ‘There are more and more people who don’t drink alcohol, like me. I’m a massive foodie and when I go to a restaurant they can’t wait to throw a wine menu in front of my nose, which will never be of interest to me.
‘But put a water menu in front of me and now you’ve opened up a whole new revenue stream. It’s appealing to restaurants and it’s appealing to more and more health-conscious people and really it’s all about the epicurean experience.’
Have a look at La Popote’s full water menu here.
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