The French are known for their fine wine — but this restaurant is making a splash with a new kind of menu.
Michelin Guide-listed restaurant La Popote in northern England has an extensive menu featuring nearly 140 varieties of wine.
Now, the French-style restaurant is jumping in the deep end and making a daring move to indulge those who don’t drink alcohol — or who simply wish to stay hydrated in style — by offering a whole menu of bottled water.
Starting Friday, those who dine at La Popote will have a choice of three different bottles of still water and four options of sparkling water, as well as complimentary tap water.
The idea of a water menu was first brought to co-founders Chef Joseph Rawlins and Gaëlle Radigon three years ago by Doran Binder, a water sommelier certified by the Fine Water Academy who was already supplying the restaurant’s “house” water with his Crag Spring Water brand.
“I laughed it off,” Rawlins told CNN. “I initially thought it was a ridiculous idea.”
Binder eventually invited the pair to a tasting at his “water bar” and sold them on the idea.
They tried five or six different varieties of water, then they did a second tasting that they paired with certain foods such as Manchego cheese, Comté cheese, chocolate, Parma ham and olives — and “like with a wine, the taste just changed.”
“It was mind-blowing,” Rawlins said, adding that he learned that “water isn’t just water.”
Binder shared that La Popote is the first restaurant in Britain to offer a water menu to diners, and one of only a small handful in the world.
The water sommelier curated the restaurant’s water menu featuring a selection from across Europe, including Britain, France, Spain and Portugal.
“The measurement of minerals in water is what drives taste and flavor,” Binder told CNN. The measurement is called Total Dissolved Solids, or TDS, he explained.
“Distilled water is zero TDS. It’s brilliant for cleaning windows, brilliant for electrical appliances, brilliant for your car battery — rubbish for the human being,” he said. On the other hand, seawater is at the opposite end of the spectrum with 30,000-40,000 TDS.
La Popote has a wide TDS range, with 14 TDS in the Lauretana sparkling mineral water from Italy to 3,300 TDS in the Vichy Celastins from France.
Rawlins shared that the French water initially tastes salty, but “then you put it with something that’s quite salty like a Parma ham and they both naturally balance each other out, so the water is not salty anymore and it’s a longer-lasting flavor of the ham in your mouth.”
How the water is served is also an important factor to consider.
“We recommend it at room temperature with ice and a slice of lemon,” Rawlins said. “Water is like wine — if it’s too cold, it kills all the flavor.”
The prices of the water menu range from £5 ($6.80) for a large bottle of the Crag brand to £19 ($26) for a Portuguese sparkling water called The Palace of Vidago.
La Popote is tapping into the global trend of decreased alcohol consumption with its new water menu. that allows diners to have “another dimension.”
“There are more and more people who don’t drink alcohol, like me,” Binder said. “I’m a massive foodie and when I go to a restaurant, they can’t wait to throw a wine menu in front of my nose, which will never be of interest to me.”
“But put a water menu in front of me, and now you’ve opened up a whole new revenue stream. It’s appealing to restaurants, and it’s appealing to more and more health-conscious peopl,e and really it’s all about the epicurean experience.”
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