WATER PRESSURE ALERT

Big-city restaurants seem to have thought up a new way to take more of your money. They do it by charging up to $14 for a bottle of “designer” water and trying to make it tough to order plain tap water.

The Wall Street Journal, exposing some of the tricks of the trade recently, says some restaurants have seized on bottled water as a new profit center in a slow economy. The markup can be as high as 1,000 percent, compared with a measly 300 percent for wine. The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain is said to figure that bottled water accounts for 15 percent of its beverage sales, up from only 5 percent in 1999.

One of the tricks, reports the Journal, is setting bottles of water on the table in advance, as a “visual sell.” Another is to substitute for the old “regular or bottled?” question the query, “Will you have still or sparkling?” Either way, the customer pays. And if he or she asks for “regular” and an expensive bottle of non-carbonated water comes instead, few will protest. Who wants to sound like a cheapskate? Some waiters are trained to bring bottled water to the table in handsome ice buckets and pour it into crystal goblets as if it were fine wine. Anyone who insists on tap water gets it in ordinary glassware. And as people sip the costly bottled water, a smart waiter hovers nearby to keep replenishing it. Since the price is rarely mentioned, the addition to the bill can come as a nasty shock.

As far as quality is concerned, tap water is just as clean, if not as well dressed. Kathy Moriarty, water-quality manager at the Bangor Water District, says Bangor drinking water complies with the strict standards prescribed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and enforced by the Maine State Drinking Water Program. The same goes for all bottled water sold in the state, whether produced here or elsewhere.

So when you go out to dinner in New York or Washington or even Boston, watch out for this new form of water pressure. Fortunately, it has not yet struck in even the fancier restaurants around here.