The Dish: The Maryland restaurant that won’t serve tap water

Diners at Osteria 177 can take their pick of chef Arturo Ottaviano’s specialties, including seafood-rich cioppino alla Genovese, or smoky grilled calamari as fresh and tender as you might find in Italy. The wine list includes refreshing Falanghina from the Campania region and a $600 bottle of Cristal.

One thing customers can’t have at the longtime restaurant in downtown Annapolis? Tap water. Guests can choose either still or sparkling bottled water, but the stuff from the spigot is strictly off the table.

Ottaviano implemented the rule six years ago as a way of controlling costs during the pandemic. The water bill at the restaurant was astronomical, he said.

Years later, customers still occasionally gripe about the no-tap policy, but Ottaviano, who opened the spot 20 years ago on Annapolis’ Main Street, has stuck with it. He’s preparing to launch a new lounge in Annapolis that also won’t serve tap water.

But the restaurateur bristled at the idea that any of this was worth writing about.

“It’s fine dining,” he said, noting that he charges just $3.75 for a bottle of San Benedetto still water, far less than many other eateries. “If you cannot pay $4 for a bottle of water, it’s a joke.”

The water policy at Osteria 177 can seem foreign to those of us steeped in American hydration culture. We drink lots of water, and we drink it from the tap. We go to work carrying metal Stanley cups so large they could be used as weapons. A parent who brings their kids to the playground without a water bottle risks catching the eye of child services — or, at least, lots of whining.

Which is perhaps why it’s so uncommon for restaurants in the U.S. to refuse to serve tap water. It has made headlines in the past, like when, in the midst of a drought in 2015, a California restaurant notified customers that it would no longer serve tap water in an effort to cut down on waste.

“Everything’s so expensive, just to have bottled water, to me, is presumptuous,” said Ed Bosco, whose Verde restaurant offers customers filtered water served in glass wine bottles alongside still and sparkling options.

“Is it even legal to deny providing a paying customer with tap water?” a commenter wrote on Reddit after they were allegedly refused tap water at a high-end Italian restaurant in New Jersey a few years ago. In Jersey and Maryland, there are extensive laws governing how water is sourced, used and disposed of, but there is no law requiring restaurants to provide tap water to customers.

On the other hand, it’s fairly common for restaurants in Italy to refuse to serve tap water to customers, with waiters asking guests whether they prefer “acqua naturale o frizzante” (still or sparkling). A tourist sued a five-star hotel in the Dolomites that offered only mineral water at around $8 per bottle. This May, an Italian court sided with the hotel.

Many Italians refuse to drink tap water, said Luigi “Gino” Troia, owner of Hampden’s Grano Pasta Bar. He’s one of them. “I do not brush teeth with it,” said Troia, who grew up in Naples but moved to the U.S. as a teen.

He recalled his first sip of tap water in Baltimore 60 years ago, in his mother’s apartment on Calvert Street. “I said, ‘Mom, is this for drinking?’” he said, disgusted. “If you’re not used to it, it smells like bleach.” Tap water in Italy isn’t treated with chlorine or fluoride the way it is in the United States, he said, so the chemical smell can be off-putting to outsiders.

Still, Troia serves filtered tap water to customers who ask for it. “They say, ‘We have the best water here,’” he said with a shrug. “Who am I to say?”

At Grano, his menu carries a small warning with a whiff of disdain: “As we strive to serve safe food, we will take no responsibility in serving tap water.” Personally, he’s sticking to bottled — he prefers Acqua Filette, from the mountains of central Italy.

When I recently visited Osteria 177, servers were quick to refill my glass with San Pellegrino, which the restaurant sells for $5 per bottle — and no one checked to see if I wanted a second bottle before opening another.

Yet there were other ways the restaurant felt like a bargain. Osteria 177 doesn’t charge for its fluffy house ciabatta, some of the best free bread I’ve tried lately. During lunch service, entrees were reasonably priced, given their generous portion size and ingredients. I paid just $16 for calamari, a dish that costs around 50% more at many comparable Italian restaurants. By my mental math, the final bill felt more than fair in an era when everything costs more.

Perhaps I am ready to ditch my own combat-ready water bottle and adopt the Italian attitude about drinking. Once you notice that most tap water really does smell a little like bleach, it’s hard to go back to drinking it. I’ll take the acqua frizzante, per favore.