Comments (0) Best Free Water - 2012
FOOD
Back in 2007, when Judy Ornstein first opened her neighborhood café FOOD, she had a recycling brainstorm: Why not install a plastic, serve-yourself, all-you-can-drink dispenser and fill it with filtered H20, ice cubes and whatever fruity odds and ends she found in the kitchen? Sometimes there are hunks of pineapple sweetly infusing the cold water; other times it's a mind-bendingly thirst-quenching day spa mainstay of cucumber slices and handfuls of fresh mint. Often they go refreshingly tropical with floating orange, lime and lemon slices. Ornstein's light, rejuvenating, bright idea also doubles as an art installation that changes daily: Some have compared the dispenser, sitting in a far corner next to a stack of glasses, to wallpaper in a ladies' restroom circa 1968 or a freeze-frame from a Trix cereal commercial. But we think it recalls a dreamy, zero-gravity fruit salad experiment at NASA — and what's not to like about that? 10571 W. Pico Blvd., W.L.A. (310) 441-7770, food-la.com.
—Margy Rochlin
