In March, Alice Waters' famed Chez Panisse restaurant announced it would no longer sell bottled water due to environmental concerns over waste, not only from packaging but from transporting it too. Now other restaurants are following suit, including Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich's Del Posto, which plans to stop selling the bottled stuff by the end of this summer.
According to Bastianich, the restaurant will neutralize and purify NYC's finest through reverse osmosis, then add minerals and salts back into it to create a signature flavor profile. It won't come free, and while the price has yet to be determined, there will likely be a flat, per-person water charge. Says Bastianich: "To spend fossil fuel trucking water around the world is absurd....Water should be as local as anything gets."