A good reason to refuse ice cubes is hygiene: those things are health hazards on account of the icemakers rarely being defrosted and cleaned. It's licking public toilet seat level bad.
Ps here in Barcelona 99% of the ice served comes in a big bag from a factory. You can tell because they're huge round cylinders with a hole in the middle.
Nobody makes their own ice here, neither at home nor restaurants and other hospitality locations. The only exception seems to be the fast food chains. I would assume that stuff is pretty clean as the factory specializes in it.
Is it not like that in America?
There are two types of ice, directionally frozen and outsize in freezing. Outside in causes an ice shell to form and then water in the middle must freeze but there is nowhere for it to expand. This produces ice that has a cloudy center due to internal stress and the ice crackles.
Directionally frozen ice is a single crystal that always remains clear with a smooth surface. The smooth surface doesn’t provide a site for CO2 bubbles form, thus much better at retaining carbonation.
A lot of people think fountain soda tastes different from bottled soda poured into a glass of ice. The real difference is that home ice (either moon or tray ice) offers a completely different experience from single crystal ice from a commercial ice maker. It is the ice that is different, not the soda.
Countertop pellet ice makers are available, and I’d absolutely love to get one but my wife has vetoed it - she jokes she’d have to leave me because of all the crunching.
I bought a countertop ice maker for my wife, because she is constantly running the fridge out, and she loves to chew ice. I made sure to get the type made for people who love to chew ice.
But it's upstairs, in the master bathroom. I won't have to listen to her chewing ice.
1. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/iron-deficien...
It bugs the hell out of some of us, others couldn't care less.
Fingernails on blackboards have never bothered me. And ironically, I'm hypersensitive to sound.