So much for the three-martini lunch of yore. In Los Angeles, they’re pairing meals now with water tastings (or if you’re a big spender, you can just order the $20 bottle of water), reports Today.com:

Martin Riese, general manager and certified water sommelier of Ray’s and Stark Bar in Los Angeles, has created a water menu of 20 mineral waters from 10 countries. The water menu, which debuted August 5, is presented to diners just like a wine list or food menu.
Guests can read a thorough description on each bottle, including a detailed account of the taste, the mineral content, and the “TDS”— total dissolved solids — which, Riese says, affects the taste of the water. A low TDS means a smooth, clean drink and high TDS ensures a bitter, salty and often metallic taste.
“This is the next movement in food and beverage,” Riese told TODAY.com about the water menu, which has taken him two years to develop. “It’s the same way there’s been a lot of attention on crafted cocktails and beer — water is the next evolution, the next step.”

How long until you can do oxygen tastings with meals there?

As a native Californian, though, this move seems to perfectly capture the strange mixture of decadent materialism and obsession with health that is found in the L.A. area. But I’m also amused by the seriousness with which the “certified water sommelier” treats the taste of water, talking about the how certain level of dissolved solids “ensures a bitter, salty and often metallic taste.” Why does our culture seem to become more and more obsessed with taste, with how different flavor combinations affect the experience of our tongue while eating? Mary Eberstadt has a fascinating theory that in recent decades, we shifted our morality concerns from sex to food (just consider the ardency with which people preach eating food that’s organic and locally grown), and I wonder if our culture, now having made food the focus of our morality and near-religious practices, is also looking to good food and wine (and oh yes, water) for the kind of experiences we used to seek in a church.