All this week, the Eater Today newsletter is dedicated to editor hot takes, offering a way to release the pressure valve of crankiness that comes with sweating your way through the end of summer. This ongoing series showcases bold opinions about dining culture writ large, diving straight into the minor and major grievances of contemporary restaurant-going. Among the most pervasive and quietly infuriating rituals of modern dining is a simple question posed right after you sit down at a restaurant table: "Still or sparkling, or filtered tap?"
More and more often, a meal—even at ostensibly casual restaurants—begins not only with an attempted upsell, but with a question that many diners have come to dread because of the weird stigma attached to the inevitable response. You sit down. Your server materializes. The question arrives, often delivered with a smooth, practiced hospitality cadence: "Still or sparkling? A beat. Or filtered tap?"
Ninety-nine percent of the time, fellow diners and customers want filtered tap. They do not want to pay $11 for Evian, which tastes worse than filtered tap in most major cities and reaches room temperature at an alarming rate. Evian has long drawn complaints from critics who feel it tastes vaguely like water from a hotel pool. Furthermore, should a diner yearn for a bottle of Pellegrino, they are well aware that it can be summoned at any point during the meal. But it is the framing of the ask that troubles so many patrons, suggesting that filtered tap is the inferior, lowly choice, as though the customer has just asked the server to go out back and fill their glasses with a garden hose in the alley.
In this context, it is worth tipping a hat to Khushbu Shah—cookbook author, Eater reporter, and former Food & Wine restaurant editor—who named her personal newsletter Tap Is Fine! It is a universally praised, pitch-perfect name that leaves many culinary writers entirely envious.
It is a strange way to begin an experience ostensibly centered on genuine hospitality. Before a guest has even had a chance to look at the menu, order a guava mezcal margarita, or fully settle into their chair, they are being asked whether they would like to turn the most basic necessity on the table into a line item on the bill. Restaurants have plenty of legitimate opportunities to sell things to patrons—that is, fundamentally, why people go out to eat—but surely the very first sip of water should remain outside the machinery of the upsell.
The growing prevalence of this awkward inquiry feels suspiciously like modern diners are wriggling under the heavy, ubiquitous thumb of Big Sparkling Water. While some consumers occasionally partake in a canned sparkling beverage like Spindrift, many have not personally fallen victim to the seltzer fixation sweeping the nation, yet they cannot escape the squeeze of its fizzy grip. The cultural obsession with bubbles has reached staggering heights. One former food industry worker noted that a former colleague drank an entire case of La Croix every single day. While it is hard to make a definitive case that drinking lots of sparkling water is inherently bad for you—aside from perhaps resulting in a lot of gassy people who have to keep a close eye on their dental enamel—the relentless mania for it continues to irk observers.
Admittedly, some of this underlying annoyance may stem from a broader frustration with people who genuinely think they are above tap water. Having a Brita pitcher in the kitchen is great. Many people exclusively drink filtered tap from their refrigerator at home. But cultural clashes over water run deep. About a decade ago, one urban resident lived with a roommate who would drink exclusively Smartwater, which she stubbornly insisted had a preferable taste over municipal tap and better nutritional value.
That tiny Brooklyn apartment’s garbage can filled rapidly with empty plastic bottles day after day, and the roommate did not seem especially interested in taking out the trash more frequently as a consequence. Frankly, after a harrowing incident in which the resident was attacked by rats near the building’s dumpster, neither was anyone else. Between the relentless accumulation of single-use plastic and her unwavering, unsubstantiated belief in bottled water’s superiority, Smartwater became a persistent, low-level source of domestic tension in their household.
The reality remains that across America, most tap water is entirely fine. In New York City, it is famously delicious, celebrated by locals and experts alike as basically the nectar of the gods. In Los Angeles, its historical reputation—which many find accurate—is that it can sometimes taste unpleasant straight from the municipal pipe, though archival reports show that a couple of decades ago, Los Angeles tap water actually used to win awards for its unique flavor profile. But that is precisely what a standard in-house filter is for.
This leads to a radical, straightforward proposal for the restaurant industry: Just bring filtered tap, ideally with ice, recognizing that this is not Europe, where room temperature water is standard. For the elevated bottled experience desired by some, establishments can simply put a decorative carafe on the table, fill everyone’s glasses, and let patrons begin their evening without making basic hydration their very first purchasing decision. If water conservation is a major, legally mandated concern—as it rightly is in certain drought-prone regions—servers can ask simply, "Would you like some water?" without any subtle implication that it should be bottled and billed. Mineral and sparkling water options can easily be listed directly on the menu with their respective prices, exactly like wine or cocktails.
Under this common-sense approach, nobody is deprived of Pellegrino. Nobody is being forced to drink untreated municipal water—advocates of filtration are firmly in favor of clean, treated H2O. And nobody has to sheepishly say "tap is fine" with even an ounce of embarrassment, regardless of the restaurant’s level of prestige or white-tablecloth atmosphere. If customers are part of the fervent seltzer cabal, they can simply order it as they would any other specialty beverage from the bar.
In fact, filtered tap isn’t merely fine. Modern plumbing and sophisticated filtration systems are true wonders of human civilization. A person can turn on an ordinary faucet and instantly have clean, potable, decent-tasting water come out. It is time to free diners from the persistent water upsell. Consumers everywhere would be genuinely delighted to simply receive filtered tap without the interrogation.
