Water Reviews

Seemingly mundane things — like maybe you had an endless amount of energy and felt like you could run forever — filled you with a sense of wonder that meant how could magic not be real. When the world is so full of excitement. You knew that around every corner was a new moment waiting to fill you with joy and that you could do anything if you really wanted. And that’s what the water at Ivar’s tastes like.

Ivar’s is a fish and chips shop on the Seattle waterfront. When you arrive, you wait in line under a neon sign and order your food at a busy counter with a self-serve water dispenser sitting forgotten off to the side. Take your water and your food and follow the signs that say “Keep Clam” and “Seagull lovers welcome” out to the pier seating, under the flower-adorned awning, across from the Seattle Fire Department boats, and where the sun will set behind you as you eat. And that’s when the magic will start.

The appeal of Ivar’s, besides the fish and chips, I suppose, is that as you eat, about 50 seagulls will hang out with you, swimming around in the water below, flying overhead, or perched on the fence next to the tables, waiting for you to share your food. If you drop a french fry, or are generous enough to hold one up in the air, the seagulls will swoop hungrily to grab the fry right out of your hands. And if this doesn’t sound like a selling point, imagine being three years old and getting to feed a seagull for the first time. Feeling a little scared but excited as you watch the seagulls swoop in over and over again and finally one decides to bite a little french fry right out of your fingers. What could be better. It’d make you feel a little magic, right?

As this all happens, you’ll have five-star water to sip and enjoy the moment. A little sweet, the water is cold and delicious — the perfect refreshment on a summer evening. Go to Ivar’s and drink the water, feed the seagulls and believe again that anything is possible if you want it to be.

Ivar’s Fish Bar

It tastes like reunions and endings and risks and crowds and energy. It tastes like a reminder that a city you love can rip your heart open and expand it and somehow leave it empty and full in equal measure. 

When you take your first sip of the water at Samwon Garden, you’ll look across the table at your friends and taste a rush of bittersweet flavor that comes with leaving anything good. It’s four-star water — fresh and chill and almost perfect, like a decision you spent months thinking about and are confident in, but with a hint of the questions that haunt you about the future. 

Get the water at Samwon Garden on a night when you’re saying goodbye. To New York, to friends, to a year of pandemic, to anything. Drink it from the restaurant’s small glasses as you enjoy the Korean barbecue and laugh and make plans, and refill your glass often from the pitcher on the table. Let the experience be a metaphor for your life or New York City as a whole or the future in whatever way you want. The water will be just good enough to leave you happy and excited and questioning and sad, reminding you of the fun you’ve had in the city and the reasons you’re happy to leave, both empty and full in equal measure.

 Samwon Garden Korean BBQ

It tastes like being back inside a restaurant for the first time in over a year. It tastes like seeing a friend for the first time in what feels like an eternity and you don’t think you’re the same person you were the last time you saw them, and so much has changed. In the world, and for you, and for how you feel, and for the water. 

It’s a refreshing feeling. The possibility of it all. Of things falling into place. Finally feeling good after everything was so dark. It’s a crisp and chill taste, even without ice. The perfect temperature on a chilly mid-spring day. When you drink it, you’ll be so tuned in to the experience, so focused on the water that everything else will fall away and you won’t remember time, or the restaurant atmosphere, or even how your food tastes. Nothing else will matter but you and this water. 

But it’s only four-star water. It’s not perfect. So with all that excitement filling the glass, the type of excitement you held back smiles about all day, comes apprehension. Not enough to ruin the experience — no, it’s great water, but there’s something missing. The world is still dark and even though you got to enjoy this water for a few minutes, bad things are still going to keep happening. 

Get the water at Oasis Cafe on a day when you have a lot to lose and a lot of questions. Order it with the paprika crusted chicken. Or don’t, because you’ll probably be too distracted to think much about your food. Drink the water and focus on the taste of possibility. Don’t think about your anxiety and about things going wrong. Let the water help you enjoy the moment and later, when you remember it, remember that there will always be little sparks of excitement filling our glasses even as bad things happen.

Oasis Cafe

I tried to stop writing pandemic water reviews but everything is a pandemic water review if you really think about it. Don’t fact check me on that.

Anyway, this water was ok. I’m giving it two stars because I would unfortunately say it was lower than average. It felt bland. Just barely above room temperature and the glass it came in was unsettling to me for some reason.

So sure, this water might disappoint you a little, but it does its job well enough. If you’re in the area and it’s raining and you’re thirsty, it’s decent enough to drink. You’ll probably feel nothing and forget all about it until a year later when you start thinking about that two day trip and wondering about the little details like why do you remember the specific messages you laughed about in your Uber back to the airport and also what was the water like at the restaurant you forgot you went to.

After you have the water go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum because now you’re hydrated and it’s the best place in the world.

Trident Booksellers & Cafe

In March, a few days before everything shut down, I went to San Marzano with a friend to eat pasta and chat about a book we’d both been reading. It was the first Sunday of daylight savings time and the air was electric with the anticipation of spring and the looming fear of a deadly virus that we were all sort of still ignoring. I sat down in the small restaurant at a table facing a window where the sun was not yet setting, and glanced down at the table to find two mason jars filled with water.

I don’t like drinking out of mason jars — the use of them basically guaranteed this was not going to be five-star water, even if it tasted so fresh that I felt like I had transcended —  but I was delighted to see them anyway. What a choice to make in 2020, using mason jars as water glasses at your restaurant. And I do love a bold choice. Still, the water did not taste like bliss liquified. It didn’t make me forget that I had to go to work the next day, riding a crowded train to a full office building where someone would inevitably be coughing, even as the pandemic stared us straight in the eyes. 

Instead, the water was fine, nothing special, it just existed. A good temperature, no bitter taste. I didn’t think much about it, which is perfect for three-star water. 

According to Google, San Marzano is temporarily closed. I know restaurants are shutting their doors forever faster than any of us can process, but if this one opens up again, go there and don’t worry that this is three-star water. Drink it alongside the gluten free pesto rigatoni and chat about this water blog, because you and your friend both forgot to bring along the book you’re reading. Hopefully it won’t be the end of the world anymore, but the air will still be electric, and the water will be there for you just the same as it always was.

San Marzano

It tastes like remembering what summer feels like. You take a sip and suddenly you’re in a garden wearing cut off shorts and chatting about art to your Italian friend on the phone. You live in a world where there’s sunlight until midnight, even the dry air you’re breathing feels refreshing, and you can take a stroll around the neighborhood to get ice cream when it’s too warm out. 

Hatch Family Chocolates serves water in clear plastic cups. The taste is perfect — like a flavorless cloud. The water comes so cold and so fresh that it will feel beautiful to your parched throat. You might not be wearing Gucci, but you’ll feel like you are. 

Get the water at Hatch Family Chocolates with an order of ice cream cones or sorbet. You can drink it outside on the patio, or maybe as you continue your evening walk, or sip it while sitting under the trees at the park across the street. Let it fill you with the will to live, let it block out the overwhelming worries from your mind, and just spend a few minutes drinking the five-star water and feeling refreshed. It’s summer — or pretend it is — and you have a perfect cup of water in your hand, so turn on “Canyon Moon” and worry only about having a good time.

Hatch Family Chocolates

Like, you have a little pet fish and you care for it every day and then suddenly you realize it’s your best friend and that it’s just you and your fish against the world in your town of history and hats and Pete Buttigieg supporters. 

You’re on a journey, you and this fish. You go through ups, you go through downs, but you’re in it together. 

Until! You have to part ways. You’re devastated. There’s a bitter taste in your mouth. You worry you’ve made a mistake ever being friends in the first place. But with time, you get wiser and you realize this is part of the journey. You and your fish have to flourish on your own. And that realization brings you a calm sense of satisfaction. You’re happy and you know your fish is happy, wherever it may be. There’s music playing in the background and you have so much ahead of you. 

This journey is what it’s like to drink the water at the Riverwalk Cafe in Nashua, New Hampshire. Not specifically the feeling of having a fish for a best friend, but that feeling of having something small and perfect for you. The ups, the downs. The brief bitter taste, leading to a deeper understanding of the world. With music playing in the background.

If you go to the Riverwalk Cafe, get a glass of water from a fancy pitcher opposite the checkout counter after you order a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Sip it slowly while you wait for the sandwich to arrive. Don’t rush anything. You might think it tastes a little bit like water from a fridge that needs the filter to be changed, but be patient. Once your food arrives, you’ll think, “this is the best bacon, egg and cheese I’ve ever had.” And then you’ll sip more water to cool your mouth down because the bite was just a tiny bit too hot and you’ll realize that you’re on a journey, you and this water, and the lesson your journey is trying to teach you is that ultimately nothing has to make sense. 

Riverwalk Cafe

My controversial take is that diners are, by far, the best type of restaurant. No, I will not apologize for this opinion. Cancel me if you must. But long-time fans of my water reviews know that my commitment to bringing readers the truth surpasses all else! 

Which brings me to my review for the water at The Belgian Waffle and Omelet Inn in Sandy, Utah. 

I went to this restaurant in 2017. A year so far back in the past all our memories of it have faded. Except for my memory of this dining experience, and the water of which I partook. 

I went to The Belgian Waffle and Omelet Inn with a big group of family members. It was mid-morning after a holiday, and as soon as I walked in I knew the water would be good. 

The reason I knew was because this was the quintessential diner. Not the type of diner that exists as a revival to diners of the past, the ones where you walk inside and feel like you’re in a Netflix movie. This was the type of diner that everyone forgets about. An unassuming place that exists not to be good, but to be a place where people can gather and everyone, no matter their specific tastes, will find something on the menu that will satisfy them. 

And so what makes the water at this restaurant good is that isn’t anything special. It’s not trying to be something it’s not. No lemons, no fancy pitchers, no unique glasses. It’s three-star water, but those are three stars to be proud of. We don’t always need things to be perfect, we just need them to bring us together. And that’s what diner water, and diners, do best. 

The Belgian Waffle and Omelet Inn

The town is filled with small houses, cared for lovingly by the residents who “prefer the quieter things in life,” and in the evenings you stroll along Main Street window shopping and enjoying the twinkly lights strung overhead. If you were the star of the romcom, you’d have one of your big moments of the movie at the one Italian restaurant in town — hopefully it’d be the dramatic moment you realize you’ve been betrayed and decide to start sticking up for yourself, because the restaurant isn’t quite romantic enough for it to be the scene of the “sweep you off your feet” ending. And that’s how the water tastes. It has potential — it’s cute; there’s a metal pitcher on the table for you to refill your glass whenever you want, and you’re having a good time drinking it. But the water feels stagnant. You’re not Julia Roberts, and neither is this water. You’re not about to be swept off your feet. You’re not even about to be betrayed. And this water reminds you of that with each sip. It tastes like a regular day. So Michelangelo’s water is three-star water. It will always be there but will never steal the show, no matter how hard it tries.

Michelangelo’s on Main

It’s good enough, it’s familiar, it’s comfort water. 

I had the water at the Bus Stop Cafe on a mild January day, in the afternoon on a Friday. It was overcast outside. I ordered a grilled cheese and fries. Comfort food. I needed the perfect complement to the meal, to the day, and the water was just that. It tasted nice. It came with large ice cubes in a medium sized, sturdy glass. I had enough water throughout my meal without ever thinking much about it. It was four star water. 

If you’re in the area, and stopping for something to eat, you can trust the water at the Bus Stop Cafe. Drink it in the middle of a casual day, when things feel quiet and you want to feel normal. Order something from the menu that you’ve been craving. Don’t think much about the water as you drink. You don’t need to. Just let it serve its purpose. After the meal you’ll probably forget all about the water, but it will have been there when you needed it, an unimposing background piece to bigger moments. 

Bus Stop Cafe

Also I think it’s generally best to support local businesses over massive chains owned by billionaires, whenever possible. But again, no strong feelings. 

And so it’s likely unsurprising that the water at Starbucks also inspires no strong feelings, positive or negative, and falls right in the middle of the scale at three stars. 

I was unable to compare the water at all 31,256 Starbucks locations worldwide, but I’m a thorough water reviewer so I tested the water at three Manhattan locations. At each store, the water tasted fine. Perfectly adequate and drinkable. It always had a lot of ice. Too much ice, honestly, because I was testing this in December and it was cold and I wanted to carry the water with me outside one of the times. 

When you order the water, it will likely come in a clear plastic cup. If you want water during the holidays, Starbucks water will come in a festive cup, which could be nice if you like holidays or confusing in the case of the cup pictured above which just sort of had “holiday letters” scattered around it in a way that made no sense no matter how long I looked at it. 

Drink Starbucks water when you’re on the go, if you don’t care about having something that tastes great, but need water that’s basically reliable and easy to grab in the midst of whatever else you have going on in your life. As you drink, you may be reminded that like the majority of Americans are Americans, this Starbucks water is water. 

Starbucks

And in the case of Mercado Little Spain, a Spanish food market in the basement of the Hudson Yards mall, the water is guilty by association. 

If you’re like me, you might try the water at Mercado Little Spain after a trip to the Vessel during which you couldn’t come up with even one positive thing to say about the alarmingly pointless and massive “sculpture” that cost $200 million to build. Fortunately for Mercado Little Spain, you can come up with positive things to say about the water. Enough positive things for two stars. 

The water at this food market tastes great. It’s crisp and fresh and served in what feel like higher quality than normal plastic cups. You can walk around with it while you shop.* But since this is two-star water, that is where the positive comments end. 

Along with the obvious fault of being water you’ll drink during a trip to Hudson Yards, the water is pretty inaccessible. It’s very unclear where in this food market to get water and so you will be forced to eat two churros dipped in extremely rich chocolate (delicious, by the way, but this isn’t a churro reviews blog), without water and you will be desperately thirsty by the time you finish. 

So because the availability of water is an issue everyone should pay more attention to, this water can’t overcome the hurdle of being Hudson Yards water by just tasting great and being a nice temperature, and it remains two-star water.

Mercado Little Spain

⭐️⭐️

That’s what the water at the Nauvoo Cafe at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square tastes like. It embodies these feelings in every gulp and will leave you refreshed — just a bit, not too much.

The Nauvoo Cafe offers water from a self-serve fountain, but it’s exceptionally good fountain water. Four-star water, instead of the standard three stars most fountain water achieves. It’s very cold, but the taste is perfectly clear, and even on the snowiest days, it will make your heart feel warm. As you sip, you’ll be reminded of all the water that came before your glass and all the memories that were made drinking it.

The cold, rich four-star water at the Nauvoo Cafe is good, almost the best. Water that will remind you of the reason for the season — no matter which season it is. Order it alongside the turkey cranberry sandwich, and let the taste erase your worries for a minute or two.

Nauvoo Cafe

That is to say, the water at the Cheesecake Factory is bad. One-star water at best, though I’m not 100 percent sure it can safely be described as water at all due to the extreme plasticky taste that accompanies it. Plasticky, not like water that has been sitting in a bottle for months, but plasticky in a way that makes you think your cup — designed to look like glass but feel extremely cheap — has begun to dissolve into your beverage and you are slowly being poisoned while unhappy waitstaff gloomily mutter the words to “Happy birthday” at a nearby table. If you are hoping for a respite from the horrific Cheesecake Factory decor or the restaurant’s atrociously bland food, do not rely on the water to deliver it. You are best off not going at all, but if you must, order something besides water to drink. Or, add lots of lemon to your cup so you can do what the Cheesecake Factory exists to help us do: half-heartedly trick ourselves into thinking death does not creep ever nearer each dehydrated minute of our lives. 

The Cheesecake Factory

When you order water at Lucky 13, it will arrive in a clunky, tall glass that is too heavy to lift. You’ll wonder if the glasses are fun or weird, but the water looks good so you’re willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. As you take your first sips, the glass of water, filled with ice and with a lemon slice resting on the side, will make you feel good. You'll start to think the heavy glasses are powerful rather than intimidating. “This might be four-star water,” you’ll tell your dining companions. 

But just like one of the people you’re eating with, the water at Lucky 13 will betray you. As you wait for the food to arrive, the ice will melt and your sadness will grow and you’ll realize nothing will ever be the same. Your water now tastes bad and the letdown was the greatest disappointment of all.

The water at Lucky 13 is two-star water. It’s not undrinkable, but the taste certainly isn’t good and you’ll need to add the lemon to make it bearable. Order it if you want to be slightly ragey and in a bad mood by the end of your meal. 

Lucky 13

Probably not, because you don’t run a water blog. That’s okay. We all have different interests. I have had water that I wanted to tell everyone about, and it’s the water at Squatters in Salt Lake City. If you know me personally, you have probably heard me talk about this exceptional water and the unique way it’s served that caused it to receive the first glowing five-star review of any Utah water to date.  

What makes the water at Squatters so great? Everything. It was fresh. It was cold. It was the flavor water should be. That flavorless flavor that makes you want to sip large gulps just because it feels so smooth and hydrating. The water was so good, in fact, that it’s the only thing I remember from my meal. I think I ordered some sort of sandwich, but could I tell you how it tasted? No. The main event was the water. 

But in addition to the taste and temperature of the water was the way it was served. In tall glasses. Good. With straws. Good? Not usually in 2018, but these straws were good. You see, when we at the table were asked by the waiter if we wanted straws and we all hesitated, guilty expressions visible on our faces, he jumped in to say, “These are guilt-free straws!” The straws at Squatters are biodegradable. Made out of cornstarch. And before you scrunch up your face at that idea, know they didn’t feel like they were made out of cornstarch. They just were. 

So, should you find yourself in need of a restaurant to go to in downtown Salt Lake, particularly if you are feeling extra parched, go to Squatters, for there you’ll find glorious water and guilt-free straws.

Squatters

The cafe scene from Nora Ephron’s beloved 1998 romcom is one of the most pivotal scenes in the movie. Spunky, down-to-earth hero Kathleen Kelly shows up with a copy of “Pride and Prejudice” and a rose to meet her mysterious email correspondent. At the same time, brash but lovable Joe Fox shows up to meet her, finds out she’s his business nemesis (with the help of BFF sidekick Dave Chapelle), and proceeds to mildly torment Kathleen while she faces down the disappointment of a meet cute gone wrong. Of course, as viewers of both sides of the story, we know better. But unfortunately, the water at Cafe Lalo reflects the emotions of our dear Shopgirl rather than those we felt while watching the movie. Yes, though one might say the water fits the down-to-earth sensibilities of our favorite protagonist, ultimately, the feelings it causes will be the same she felt on that lonely night: expectation turned to frustration turned to crushing disappointment. The water at Cafe Lalo is two-star water. As basic as the act of going to a cafe just because it’s featured in your favorite movie, it is lukewarm and uninspired. Though the taste is fine (hence the two stars), you’ll be left feeling like you missed something. A refreshing drink, or, I don’t know, the love of your life. 

Cafe Lalo