Every restaurant in Mexico has to provide, by law, purified water to the customers. Now, that doesn't mean it's easy to get it: restaurants, the nicer the worst, try by all means to get you to pay for bottled water. I hate that!
Our last experience illustrates how far waiters will go to NOT give you free water. We went into a really nice restaurant and I asked for "a glass of water from your filter", not a bottle of water, not just vague "water". The waiter asked if I wanted it with ice or not, I said with. A couple of minutes later he comes by while we're focused on the menus, quickly opens a bottle of water and pours both Tony and I glasses before retreating.
I call him and ask why he didn't give me filtered water. He says they're out. I ask if that means they're cooking our dinner with unfiltered water! He reassures me that the kitchen has plenty of filtered water and that our food will be made according to the "highest hygiene standards", with pristine purified water. I ask why I cannot get some of that great hygienic water. He says normally they have special filtered water for customers but they just happened to run out that minute so he decided to give us the bottled kind since he didn't want us to go thirsty . He assures me filtered water will be available within minutes.
As announced, as soon as I finished my (expensive) glass of water he came over with an oversized pitcher of filtered water, which had apparently magically appeared. The quest for free water was successful... until the next restaurant visit!
