Let’s get this straight:
In a city where much of the populace prefers 7-Eleven’s Big Gulp to fresh-squeezed orange juice, I’m supposed to make fine distinctions among bottled waters?
My editors give my palate, and my patience, too much credit.
See, a new East Village “boutique” called Molecule is peddling tap water — tap water — at $2.50 for a 16-ounce bottle. Stuff from a faucet is given a seven-step “purification” involving magnets, carbon, “reverse osmosis” and UV lights to “scrub it down” to the molecular level. The owner says it’s to get rid of “toxins.”
Never mind that experts praise New York City’s water as among the world’s freshest-tasting — it comes from “a watershed that is relatively pristine,” says chemical engineer Loraine Huchler.
But wait! There’s so much more! For an additional $1, you can also have vitamins and minerals added to your Molecule! No operators are standing by — just be dumb enough to pop into 259 E. 10th St. yourself.
My editors asked me to turn my famously infallible palate loose on a blind-tasting of Molecule, three popular bottled waters and ordinary, unimproved tap water.
Guess what? Molecule was the only one I didn’t like. My notes say “tannic” — a term usually applied to an unpleasant astringency in too-young wine.
All that purging yielded an unnatural-tasting result. On the other hand, I appreciated the pure, clear essences of Poland Spring, Evian and Fiji. And the entry I jotted down as “slightly mineral” — it turned out to be local tap.
The “improved”-water scam started in restaurants. If it works on diners, why not on eat-at-home dimwits? Some places charge nearly as much for tap “triple-filtered” in house as they do for Perrier and San Pellegrino.
Waverly Inn touts “reverse osmosis” water. At short-lived Agua Dulce, customers were lectured about the house water somehow saving Latin America’s starving peasants.
Who’d waste money on Molecule? Those who belong to the High Holy Church of Culinary Rectitude.
They’re the ones who blog and bitch that everything we consume is part of a plot to poison us and lay waste to the environment.
Even without a molecule of truth.