Wolf doesn’t think it’s so far-fetched, believing that “no one is more adaptable than a restaurateur” and reminiscing about the whining that ensued when smoking was banned, even though everyone “survived beautifully.”  Perhaps Zakarian just needs to remember the tidy profit potential in home-bottled seltzer the likes of which Chez Panisse has started serving—all those bottles of water from far away, after all, still need to be paid for, whereas the carbonator’s expense pretty much ends after an initial investment.  Who knows, perhaps home-bottling will end up making restaurants money!

Daniel Gross’ April article in Slate about the new snob appeal of tap water relates it to the democratization of bottled.  The fact, he argues, that bottled water is available in convenience stores, vending machines, and office refrigerators, packaged in plastic, not glass, makes it look cheap and mass-produced.  This image of bottled water as an industry, not a craft, creates a sort of “reverse snob appeal” in shunning bottled water. 

He continues: “Bottled water’s swift transformation from glass-encased luxury good to déclassé, plastic-wrapped menace was entirely predictable.  Over the past century, we’ve seen numerous examples of products that, so long as they were available only to a select few, were viewed by those elites as brilliant, life-improving developments…but once companies figured out how to make them available to the masses, the elites suddenly condemned them as dangerous and socially destructive.” 

Hey, who cares?  Shipping water across oceans is stupid and pointless, and I’m glad people are acting to stop it.  I believe the type of customers who eat at Chez Panisse, Del Posto or Blue Hill will laud rather than reject the move.  How long will it take people, especially chefs and owners, to notice the hypocrisy in ordering water from Fiji in a supposedly sustainable restaurant?