Why don’t all restaurants serve ice water? Some diners can’t stand it.
We live in a divided world, awash with concerns.
I know this not just from following the news but from observing people in my natural habitat - restaurants, of course - and fielding complaints from the dining public.
Maybe it’s because we had the hottest summer on record. Perhaps it’s a desire to be in control, or embedded in the American way of life. Whatever the reason, I’ve noticed a sudden fascination with whether a restaurant serves (first-world problem alert!) ice in water.
People have strong opinions on the subject.
Meet Ellen, a recent participant of my every-Wednesday online dining Q & A. “Why have restaurants started leaving ice out of water?” she asked. “This was always a thing in Europe, where asking for ice could become an international incident. Now it’s happening here. I want ice in my water and I don’t think I should have to beg for it.”
Another member of Team Ice identified themself as Margofornow. “I am having to request a cup of ice more and more often and it’s one more task that’s on me as a diner and didn’t used to be. And it also means I need the table space for that extra water glass or cup, and am adding ice to the beverage glass as I consume it. Just bring ice water, already.”
Dissenters, including people with teeth sensitivity, followed with a river of rebuttals.
“Ice can make water tougher to drink!” posted a chatter with the handle SomeWhoCallMeTim. “It’s easier to take a big gulp without” it. “And why get a big glass of ice water in Winter? Both my wife and I ask for no ice regularly, and it is pretty much the norm in Europe.”
Susan Gage Caterers in Landover, Md., oversees about 4,000 events a year. That’s a lot of ice - a crucial detail at any gathering, says owner Chappall Gage, whose company uses up to six pounds of ice per guest, for chilling and consumption, for major parties. “Ice is cheap, a dollar or two a bag,” says the caterer. “Running out of ice is expensive,” he says. Say you spend $400 on alcohol for a party and the ice disappears, he says. Party over, basically. “There’s nothing worse than a warm vodka soda or white wine.”
The company exclusively serves bottled water - filtered tap water in recycled bottles - at its functions, and it tries to pour the iced content close to seating time. Too early, especially in hot weather, Gage says, and the glasses sweat in the heat, creating puddles on the table and, sometimes, discoloration on fancy linens.
Gage’s personal preference? “No ice” in water signals “a high level of service” when dining out. He might be on to something. An informal survey of upscale Washington restaurants, including Fiola, Kinship, L’Ardente and Xiquet by Danny Lledó, reveals they all omit ice in water glasses. The chef-owner at Xiquet, Danny Lledó, says he does that so guests aren’t “chewing or biting” when they drink, and to avoid water splashing on the table.
A notable exception is the much-heralded Inn at Little Washington, whose tap water comes from several springs that feed into a reservoir on the edge of town in the eastern foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Diners who ask for regular water get that, plus ice cubes made from the same source. Cachet all the way.
One commenter on my chat, RockCrosby, had another theory: “They might be leaving ice out of your water because the ice is dirty/contaminated. Lots of grabbing hands.”
But a restaurant inspector in the District says he has never closed a place because of a dirty ice machine. “I make them turn it off and clean it while I’m doing the inspection,” says the agent, who agreed to text on the condition of anonymity because he’s not allowed to talk to the media. “And when I say clean it … I mean remove and melt all the ice and clean and sanitize all the inner workings.”
Not all dining venues are the same. “Ice in hotels is sketchy because no one takes off the front panel to clean it,” the inspector says. “Also, a lot of inspectors forget about ice machines outside of the kitchen when they do hotel inspection.” That said, he prefers ice in his glass, even in his local dive bar, where, he jokes, “I’m hoping the Scotch” is “off-setting something.”
I’ll confess I’m agnostic about ice in water, although I like it chilled. And I really like the way it’s offered at Zaytinya by José Andrés in Washington, where a server simply asks, “Ice water all right?” instead of pushing designer bottles of still or sparkling water. (My free splash from the tap contained just enough filtered-water cubes to remind me that I wasn’t in Europe, but nothing close to a brain freeze.) General Manager Alan Grublauskas calls the water routine “Zaytinya’s SOP,” or standard operating procedure, a gesture of hospitality.
The U.S. preference for frozen cubes in H2O is nothing new. “I think that there is but a single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide name ‘American,’” Mark Twain wrote. “That is the national devotion to ice-water.” Boston native Frederic Tudor was successful in promoting ice in beverages in the 19th century, during which he shipped ice from New England to New Orleans, the Caribbean and elsewhere, according to a 2016 story in Epicurious. One way the Ice King scored customers was by giving people free iced drinks before charging them. “A man who has drank his drinks cold at the same expense for one week can never be presented with them warm again,” Tudor said.
Martin Riese, who has 30 years in the hospitality business under his belt, including at the high-end Patina Restaurant Group in Los Angeles, declines ice when he eats out. “It dilutes the drink and doesn’t make it better,” he says, still bothered by a whiff of chlorine from a recent beverage chilled by ice cubes made from tap water. Plus, with ice, diners are “numbing up [their] tasting abilities.”
Such sentiments are to be expected of a man who relocated from his native Germany on an “Einstein” visa and who has made a career out of being a water sommelier. Co-founder of the International Water Alliance, Riese is no snob. “It’s totally fine to drink filtered tap water” at home, which he says he does. If a restaurant doesn’t have a water he likes, he selects from six bottles he stows in his car.
“So far,” he jokes, “no one has charged me a corkage fee.”
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