Come for the artisanal ice, stay for the pretension

I’ve already made reservations at the swanky Pennsylvania-themed (woo!) restaurant Second State in Washington, DC. I’m also bringing an extra dollar, not for strippers, but for the artisanal ice in the drinks.

WOW! Artisanal ice! Not that trashy big box ice you get at other crappy restaurants! This ice is homemade by an artiste!

If you pay $1 for special ice, I got one word for you: “They saw you comin.’” Christ, it’s ice. You can make it anywhere. This particular ice comes from DC’s Favourite Ice (subtract 5 points for British spelling) boutique ice company (subtract 1 million points for being an insufferable concept). It’s purified water, you see. It’s unclouded, which I guess makes some sort of difference in a drink. And they chop the edges off the ice cubes so there are no corners, like the sheets of paper on Battlestar Galactica.

You know where else I can get purified water? From my plain ol’ Sears fridge in my non-trendy rowhome. It’s from a built-in filter and I never thought to charge people $1 at parties. It makes crushed ice or cubed ice! Shall I open my own restaurant?

My disdain for this pretension is not helped by the fact that I won’t pay a premium for water. I just ask that it not be brown or include sediment. I don’t mind using the fridge water because it’s not like we pay every time; we paid for the appliance once and that was it. I don’t buy bottled water if I can help it. Tap water in a reusable container is fine with me. This whole ridiculous restaurant reminds me of The Simpsons when Apu sent explorers to the Arctic for the ice and when they complained that several people died on the mission, Apu said, “If you can think of a better way to get ice, I’d like to hear it.”

Can we also stop with this “artisan” nonsense for everything? It’s not like you made your own bread or something that actually entailed effort. It’s just … this is ice. Not much of a degree of difficulty obtaining it. Maybe I will put up a sign in our kitchen and offer special ice. I’ll put filtered water in trays so I can say I was an artisan and did it myself. It will be locally sourced Delaware water, so wow! And it will be in a tray of just 12 cubes so it will be small-batch ice. What a bargain.