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PARIS

Reader Question: Do Paris cafés really charge extra for ice?

A viral tweet has many convinced that Paris cafés charge extra for ice in your drink.

Published: 18 July 2023 17:20 CEST
Reader Question: Do Paris cafés really charge extra for ice?
(JEAN-PIERRE MULLER / AFP)

A rumour has been buzzing across social media that café patrons in the French capital charge extra for ice in your drink.

The discussion around expensive glaçons began when a tweet by the account ‘AlertesInfos’ was published on Monday, allegedly showing a bill from a Paris bistro charging the recipient €72.80.

It included four 12cl bottles of Perrier (mineral water), charged at €15 each, as well as 16 ice cubes, at €0.80 a piece.

The tweet gained traction when former French politician and presidential candidate from the Socialist Party, Ségolène Royal, shared it. 

However, despite the tweet’s popularity, having been viewed over one million times as of Tuesday evening, it is actually a fake, as reporting by Le Parisien established.

The bill was likely falsified from an original image shared on Twitter in 2019 by journalist Nora Hamadi. The true image showed a receipt for €30, with five mineral waters adding up to €27.50 and five lemon slices, equalling €2.50, charged.

Iced drinks

While ice in your drink will not cost you extra, you do need to specifically request it.

Soft drinks in France are usually served without ice, so if you want your beverage iced, you need to request the drink avec glaçons – with ice – when you order.

While you will not be charged for ice, it is possible you could be charged for lemon slices – especially if you are in a café in a tourist area of Paris. This is not common, but be sure to double check. 

Mineral water

While ice cubes are free, water can be surprisingly expensive – especially in tourist hotspots of Paris.

The original tweet, which was later doctored, was a complaint about the high cost of mineral water at a Paris café.

If you simply ask for d’eau (water) you will usually be brought mineral water – and it’s not uncommon for this to be more expensive than wine or beer.

One simple way to avoid this is by ordering tap water, which is free (and entirely safe to drink) – specify une carafe d’eau or un pichet d’eau when you order and you will be brought a jug of tap water.

The French government passed nationwide legislation in January 2022 requiring bars, cafés and restaurants to offer free tap water to customers. The text of the law says: “Food and beverage establishments are required to visibly indicate on their menu or on a display space the possibility for consumers to request free drinking water”.

The city of Paris is also encouraging people to drink tap water when they are out and about, rather than buying plastic bottles of mineral water.

One of the biggest uses of single-use plastics is water bottles – across France 8.7 million plastic bottles of water are sold each year and only half are recycled.

In fact, the city of Paris launched a campaign called Je choisis l’eau de Paris (I choose Paris water) in 2022 to encourage people to avoid single-use plastics, by instead buying a bottle and refilling it with tap water. Bars, cafés, shops and restaurants that display the l’eau de Paris logo will refill your bottle for free, even if you don’t buy anything.

Soft drinks vocabulary

Une carafe d’eau (or un pichet d’eau) – a pitcher of water. This is what you should ask for if you want regular, tap water. In some parts of France, people might instead say pot d’eau or cruche

Avec glaçon – with ice

Eau non potable – Non-drinking water. If you see a sign that says this, do not drink the water as it is likely used for cleaning or other purposes. 

Eau potable – drinking water

Citron – lemon

L’addition – the bill

L’eau minérale – mineral water

Gazeuse – fizzy/sparkling

Plate – flat

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HEALTH

Perrier problems: What’s going on with French mineral water?

Perrier has halted production of 1-litre bottles of its famous carbonated water because of a contamination problem - the latest in a series of problems with some of France's most famous mineral water brands.

Published: 14 June 2024 15:03 CEST
Perrier problems: What’s going on with French mineral water?

The French love bottled water. They spent an estimated €2.5 billion and drank an average of 145 bottles each of the stuff in 2023.

The country is both the world’s biggest exporter of bottled water and the home of its most famous brands from Volvic to Evian, Vittel to Perrier.

But all is far from well in the highly lucrative bottled water market.

In January, it was reported that a third of French mineral water brands received treatments which are banned for the supposedly ‘natural’ products and, in April, France’s health watchdog demanded a clampdown at Nestlé water sites after traces of “faecal” contamination were found.

Meanwhile drought conditions last year raised concerns about overproduction of bottled water in France, with companies exempted from water restrictions that everyone else faced.

Perrier problems

Now, it has emerged that Nestlé has halted production of one-litre bottles of Perrier water at its facility in Vergèze, in the Gard département in south-west France, according to Le Monde and Radio France.

After learning in April that one of the plant’s wells had been shut down following a ‘contamination episode’ after flooding caused by Storm Monica, the investigation has found that two more wells have recently undergone disinfection operations – which the Nestlé group said was a ‘regular maintenance operation’.

Following the April contamination warning, State authorities ordered the destruction of a batch of at least two million bottles of Perrier. The final number of destroyed bottles was around 2.9 million, according to Nestlé group’s own estimates.

Officials, including members of the Occitanie regional health authority, visited the Vergèze facility on May 30th to inspect the plant, boreholes and water quality monitoring laboratory. The findings of this inspection have not yet been made public.

But of seven wells used to produce Perrier brand fizzy mineral water, most are currently out of service, the investigation found – prompting production of the famous one-litre green bottles of Perrier water to be halted until at least the end of summer.

A préfectural decree means the company can draw water from two boreholes to produce a drink called Maison Perrier, which will not have ‘natural mineral water’ status.

Water conditions

The risk to water quality is not confined to the Vergèze operation. Safety concerns have been known by health authorities for years in the Vosges region where the Hépar, Contrex and Vittel brands are drawn, the investigation found, citing a confidential report in which officials expressed concern about the withdrawal of illicit treatments, which could “expose consumers to a health risk, as the treatments were put in place to compensate for a quality defect in the resource”.

In June 2023, in a letter sent to food safety watchdog the Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire alimentaire nationale (Anses), the director of Occitanie’s regional health authority referred to “regular bacteriological contamination of raw water in at least five of the seven drilling”. 

In October of the same year, Anses alerted the government of an “insufficient level of confidence” to ensure “the health quality of finished products”.

Nestlé’s response

Nestlé said that it had initiated a plan to transform its factories, in agreement with authorities. “We have invested significantly, and will continue to do so, to protect this unique heritage and ensure its future,” the group told journalists from Le Monde and Radio France.

But unions are concerned about the future of the plant and its 1,000 employees and have triggered a clause in the Code du travail meaning they will be alerted of “facts likely to affect the economic situation of the company”, amid concerns authorities could order the shutdown of the plant for safety reasons.

So, is bottled water in France safe to drink?

There are two main types of bottled water in France – spring water and mineral water. 

Spring water is subject to the same safety regulations as tap water. But it cannot undergo disinfection treatment. Be aware, a single brand of spring water can in fact come from several sources located in different regions, and the composition can change bottle-by-bottle, depending on the origin.

Mineral waters are not subject to the same safety rules as tap water – in fact, some mineral waters would not be allowed in the public drinking water system because they would not meet strict criteria. For example, fluoride levels are limited at 1.5 mg/l for tap water; mineral waters, however, can contain up to 5 mg/l.

Like spring water, mineral water should not be subject to disinfection treatments.

But, on the whole, and despite recent concerns, bottled water in France is safe to drink.

And which one is the cheapest?

Tap water. According to consumer watchdog UFC-Que Choisir it costs €0.003 per litre, on average, or less than €2 per year for a consumption of 1.5 litres of tap water every day.

And it is subjected to all kinds of routine checks – 54 different parameters are monitored pretty much all the time.

6 things to know about tap water in France

If you’re not a fan of the taste, you could always run it through a water filter. It will be more expensive, but still cheaper than bottled water – and still subject to the same number of safety checks, plus it has been filtered.

It’s also better for the planet because tap water doesn’t involve plastic bottles – the city of Paris is currently running a campaign to encourage people to drink tap water in order to reduce waste in the form of plastic bottles. The city has hundreds of drinking water fountains and businesses that display the L’Eau de Paris’ label will refill your water bottle for free.

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