A restaurant in the English county of Cheshire has launched a water menu, as have a number of US establishments. Is it really possible, though, to tell one terroir from another?
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or diners at a fancy restaurant in Cheshire, there is now a new twist to the usual routine. First comes La Popote’s menu, created by the owners, the chef Joe Rawlins and Gaëlle Radigon, who live upstairs with their children. Next comes the wine list, which includes more than 100 bottles. And then, in what is very much a first for Cheshire, a water list.
Rawlins, 32, presents the new menu as I get comfy in the dining room in a converted redbrick barn in Marton, a village halfway between Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent. A choice of seven waters ranges from a £5 bottle of Crag, which comes from the nearby Peak District, to Vidago, a mineral-rich water from a Portuguese spa town, which will cost you £19.
At a loss as to why I would need a water menu – or how a bottle could cost more than I would spend on wine – I consult La Popote’s water sommelier. Doran Binder, who created the menu, is part of a growing global mission of water evangelists with an unquenchable conviction. For Binder and his ilk, water has for too long been sidelined. He believes it deserves to be celebrated as a proper drink.
