IN creating Incanto restaurant and wine bar, owner Mark Pastore painstakingly rendered his vision of fine Italian dining.

Florentine sheet music, inked onto parchment from the 16th century, hangs from the archways. Super-Tuscan vintages that cost $275 a bottle line the wooden racks of his climate-controlled cellar. Diners can feast on porchetta di testa, or pork head, with shaved radish and pecorino.

What Pastore does not offer: a single drop of San Pellegrino, Santa Lucia or any other bottled water, regardless of provenance.

When it opened in 2002, the San Francisco restaurant became the first in the country to consciously ban packaged water for conservation reasons.

Pastore said the decision sprang from his belief in gustatory authenticity that happens to go hand-in-hand with environmental stewardship.

"I just think it's the right thing to do," said Pastore. "I thought it was kind of foolish to put water in bottles and ship it around the world."

This spring, Chez Panisse in Berkeley will join the small cluster of Bay Area restaurants like Incanto, NoPa in San Francisco and Poggio in Sausalito that have completely traded in bottles for tap.

Shipping glass bottles of European spring water across the Atlantic to American restaurants pollutes the air and oceans, environmentalists say.

And domestic water in plastic bottles, the kind most purchased by the average American, may pose an even greater environmental threat: landfill ...