Emma’s Food Irritations: Water with Lemon
I eat often, a lot, and with great pleasure, and then I frequently notice things. Often they’re positive things, but it also regularly happens that something irritates me immensely. Whether that’s justified or not, sometimes I just need to vent. Hence: Emma’s Food Irritations. We’re starting with a common one: water with lemon.
These days, it seems almost impossible to order a glass of water in Dutch restaurants and cafés. A glass of water is almost always a glass of water with lemon, or mint, or cucumber, or worse still: all three.
I know plenty of people enjoy it. But when I ask for water, I want water. Not water with a piece of lemon peel whose bitter flavor has been infusing into the previously perfect water for hours. I also don’t understand what a piece of orange, a strawberry, or peach is doing in my glass.
Strange looks
When I then ask whether I could perhaps have a jug of water without any garnish, I get very strange looks in most places. Is it really too much to ask for plain tap water in my glass?
Greek salad
The low point came when I received a WhatsApp notification: I had been added to the group ‘Water with Lemon’. As often happens at the start of a new group chat, I looked at the screen expectantly. What would the first words be? It was a photo. A photo of a carafe of water containing a cherry tomato and a piece of cucumber. Where is the world headed when you unsuspectingly order water and then find half a Greek salad floating in it?
Dressed up
The ‘Water with Lemon’ group is now one of my most active and favorite groups, where, besides the occasional photo of things floating in our water, plenty of jokes are shared. So it does bring people together, which is something to be said for it. But I would still like to air my frustration, in the hope that someone in the hospitality industry reads this and, from now on, gives people a choice beforehand between plain water and the dressed-up version.
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