The Post set their fine-print gumshoes loose on the city’s restaurant menus and uncovered numerous crimes against the dining public, like restaurants charging for normally free items like bread, butter, and tap water. Times dining critic Frank Bruni thinks that charging extra for nice bread and butter is perfectly acceptable, but for the most part, everyone’s like holy crap, this is totally outrageous. Apparently there’s “A 20 percent mandatory tip on all checks at the Little Italy tourist spot Grotta Azzurra,” and bobo in Greenwich Village charges $1 per-person for filtered tap water.
That restaurant’s menu clearly states that the water charge funds an initiative that helps build wells in Ethiopia, teaches public school kids about sustainable agriculture, and supplies shoes for its floor staff. The shoe company’s website will tell you that for every pair of shoes bought, they’ll supply a free pair to a child in a third world country; your waiter, on the other hand, might neglect to mention this fact when faced with describing the finer points of that evening’s free range chicken special.
And so it’s come to pass that bobo’s owner Carlos Suarez has taken steps to defend his restaurant’s “collective consciousness” program called coco (both bobo and coco are portmanteau words, but maybe also clown names). Instead of the water charge being a mere case of “recession-hit restaurants […] helping themselves to your wallet by serving you an extra side of super sneaky charges,” as the Post puts it, Suarez explains it’s no recession-coping tactic, it’s been there since bobo opened in 2007, and is clearly marked on the menu. Regarding the charge, a bobo manager was quoted in the Post as saying, "If anyone doesn't want to pay it, we take it off the bill."
