Water with lemon: please no, I say

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the gourmands at online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat it and what to cook. This time our cheffies serve you: water with lemon: please no, I say.

I often eat, a lot and with pleasure, and then I often notice something. Often these are positive things, but it also frequently happens that something irritates me immensely. Whether that is justified or not, sometimes I need to vent a little. Therefore: Emma's eating annoyances. We start with a common one: water with lemon.

It seems almost impossible these days to order a glass of water in Dutch hospitality. A glass of water almost always becomes a glass of water with lemon, or mint, or cucumber or worse: all three.

Many people like it, I know that too. But when I ask for water, I want water. Not water with a piece of lemon peel whose bitter taste has been seeping 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 if I could perhaps get a jug of water without garnish, I get looked at very strangely in most places. Is it really too much to ask to just get plain tap water in my glass?

Water with a Greek salad.
True story.

Greek salad
The low point was reached when I received a notification on WhatsApp: I was added to the group ‘Water with lemon’. As is often the case at the beginning of a new app group, I looked at the screen with anticipation. What would the first words be? It was a photo. A photo of a carafe of water with a cherry tomato and a piece of cucumber in it. Where is the world going when you unsuspectingly order a water and then a half Greek salad floats in it?

Puffed up
The ‘Water with lemon’ group is now one of my most active and favorite groups, where besides the occasional photo of floating things in our water, a lot of jokes are shared. So it does bring people together, there is something to be said for that. But I would still like to express my frustration in the hope that someone in the hospitality industry reads this, who will give people the choice between plain water and the puffed-up variant in the future.