Last week I arranged to have lunch with a foodie friend and told her I'd take her anywhere she wanted to go, my treat. She chose The Compound, and so we met on the patio there one sunny afternoon. When you sit down at The Compound, they ask you if you'd like any water and then you're given a choice of bottled or "Santa Fe" water. I think Santa Fe's water is
perfectly tasty, but I also really like the way bubbly water washes food down. So I asked for bubbly. They do what they call a "continuous service," meaning that you pay $4.50, no matter how much you drink. If you drink a lot of water, it's a great deal. If you have one glass, it seems a little steep.
But the interesting part is that The Compound serves Hildon water, an English brand I don't remember having seen before. I sat down and had a glass of water in front of me for only a few minutes before my lunch date showed up. When she was presented with the water choice she looked at my glass and said, "What did you get?" We both looked at the condensation-covered, non-bubbling goblet and I replied, "Sparkling-in theory." I'd only been there a few minutes and there were hardly any of Hildon's tiny bubbles left. I was kind of disappointed because I like bubbly water with, you know, bubbles in it. So after lunch I did a little research.
Just this morning I happened to pick up Lawrence Osborne's excellent book,
The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World
, in which he writes, "The connoisseur is always a little potty, but in the case of wine the connoisseur is more than eccentric: he is consumed by a ferocious pedantry." Substitute water for wine and you have the people at
, a Web site run by people who have a slightly pathological obsession with water-and the urge to share. But hey, when you want an expert opinion on a particular subject, you can make excellent use of the pathologically obsessed.
FineWaters has entries on all of the water bottlers you've heard of and a zillion more. It has a bubble-o-meter kind of chart that categorizes the relative bubbliness of waters from bold to classic, light, effervescent and still. Perrier is bold; Evian is still. Hildon is described as effervescent, or "fine balance." As FineWaters puts it, "Waters with a Fine Balance have the smallest bubble. In some instances these waters lose their "sparkle" very quickly-and some are almost "still." There are not many brands in this category-and they tend to be the more expensive sparkling waters. They are represented by brands such as Badoit, Voss, Highland Spring and Hildon…"
Hmm. Yes. I've noticed that same thing about Voss, an expensive water that comes in a tall glass cylinder with VOSS in painted-on gray letters. Now, I like champagne to have teeny-tiny bubbles, but if my glass of sparkling wine lost its fizz as quickly as the Hildon did, I'd be pissed. So why does a fancy place like The Compound serve a water that loses its oomph faster than a septuagenarian in the sack? FineWaters says, "Since its launch in 1989, Hildon has achieved a rapid rate of growth in sales, beyond that of the market, as acceptance within the hotel, restaurant and catering trade has gained momentum. Hildon English Mineral Water has a well balanced, clean, pure taste, and, in a relatively short space of time, has become a byword for style in the restaurant and hotel world, with many exclusive establishments serving nothing else."
Look, I realize that by being a food critic, by eating at The Compound, and especially by ordering bottled water and then kvetching about it, I don't have much cred to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway: Enough already with the water snobbery! Can ya just serve San Pellegrino like everybody else? I'm not too good for Pellegrino! And I like those big bubbles, which FineWaters describes as "classic." Hey, maybe Pellegrino is passé, but it wouldn't be classic if it weren't so good at washing down my jumbo crab and lobster salad ($20).
And while I'm ranting…there are many things that The Compound does very, very well. The ambiance is fabulous. The service is generally excellent. The food is, you know, classic. But I'm not paying $20 for another head of butter lettuce with a sprinkling of soggy lobster and crabmeat. I'm saving that $20 for the next time I go to the shore, and I'm going to spend it on pounds of lobster and crab that taste like they just got yanked out of the ocean. I'm going to cook it myself and I'm going to drink San Pellegrino while I do it.
The Compound
653 Canyon Road
982-4353
Dinner 5:30-9 pm nightly;
Lunch noon to 2 pm Monday-Friday
Tell me where to eat! I need your input. Send all of your tips, gripes and raves to food@sfreporter.com.
