The Most Expensive Tap Water In The World

Below you can see a receipt for the most expensive tap water in the world. I ate lunch at this family-run bar/restaurant/café. As you can see I ordered a €18.50 steak (the most expensive item on the lunch menu). This was a small (6.3 oz) plain tenderloin steak with fries (chips). That's all I got. No mushrooms. No sauce. No salad. No bread. I also asked for tap water. Now I drink tap water at home when I eat, so I order the same when I eat out. The glass was only 200 ml. So I asked for two more. Only the third had a little ice in it.

I get my check. I was charged €5.40 for 600 ml of water. When I was in The Netherlands the dollar/euro exchange rate was about $1.58. So for the Americans I'll convert that. It comes to $54/gallon. That's right. I was charged $54/gallon for tap water! (Converted to dollars the steak was $29.)

For comparison, later that afternoon in the same vicinity I bought a 500 ml bottle of mineral water at a small supermarket. I was charged €0.59. In American that's $7/gallon.

Now I have a very strong dislike of being charged for tap water when I'm ordering food. This was the only time I was charged on this trip, as after this I asked first and walked out of any establishment that charged for tap water. Fortunately none of the Indian restaurants charged, and being gluten-free they are the easiest places for me to eat at.

As you can see this establishment Het Wapen van Munster does have a web site. It has the obnoxious Flash, even for simple things like static buttons. There is a lunch menu on the site. You can find the steak on it with mushrooms and bread that I did not get (nor wanted). I was given no discount for no mushrooms. (At another place I ate there was a €3 difference between no sauce and sauce.) And, of course, tap water is not on the menu.

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