Wait…when did salt become hip?

By Kevin Grzyb in Food on Jul 25, 2005 5:37PM

Chicagoist can, at times, be considered a bit of a foodie or more realistically a food snob. This was fairly cemented in our own realization when, at a recent dinner party at our house a guest casually asked for some salt, prompting the reply ‘What kind?’ With their look of utter befuddlement and curiosity only equaled by Nipper, we explained that we had more than the blue canister variety when it came to salt and then produced no fewer than seven kinds of salt from the Pandora’s Box that is our spice cabinet. Okay, even we were sort of blown away. We had Sea Salt (fine), Grey Salt (Sel Marin de Guerande), Hawaiian Black and Red Salt, Fleur de Sel, and two kinds of smoked salt.

Then on a recent trip to visit the in-laws, we were helping them break in a new molcajete and talking about salt, the father in –law swears by kosher when he cooks (primarily French or in the French style) and we swear by sea salt in our day to day adventures. So, he talked about how the great chefs all seem to swear by sea salt on cooking shows of late (he used to live next door to Julia, hardcore old school) and he was thinking of getting a salt mill and trying sea salt. With his birthday around the corner, we headed up to Evanston and stopped in at The Spice House to pick up some salt for him. Our favorite of the really funky are the red and black Hawaiian salts and the large crystal, wet grey sea salt that they sell in bulk. The red salt comes from the rich clay that runs off from the mountains into the ocean tide pools after a rainfall and impregnates the salt with not only the red color, but the subtle earthy flavor. The black salt is similarly harvested from the black lava rock and carries the natural color and flavor through. These are two amazing salts and they can be used to add to the visual aesthetic of a plate. Unfortunately, The Spice House, is no longer able to get the two great Hawaiian salts and the story of why is part of a recurring pattern. First, for a little background, here is the product description from the web site:

"It is hand-harvested by artisan salt farmers in Hawaii. Pristine ocean water is purified and the salt evaporated by the sun and wind. There is only one salt merchant licensed by the FDA to harvest this special salt, consequently we usually have a very limited supply. Cheaper Hawaiian sea salts you might come across have actually shipped over from the mainland and then flavored with the red clay and black lava rock."

It seems that the small artisan salt farmers sold out to a British food company who refuses to sell the black and red sea salts in bulk, but rather in small quantities in fancy little jars, at an exorbitant price. And that my friend is where salt gets hip. There are also companies jumping on the salt bandwagon and smoking trendy flavors into salt. Now, we’re big on smoked salt. It works like a charm in recipes that would normally call for liquid smoke, which honestly has always been one of those ingredients that we use begrudgingly, because it scares us. Now there are popup “artisans” smoking salt over coconut shells and lime rinds which are packaged to sell at $13.00 for three ounces, sorry, it’s just gone too far. Even we have limits.

You see it time and again, in the 80’s everything got a hit of dill, the late 90’s were the days of chipotle. Not the restaurant, the pepper, it was in everything, thanks, Bobby. Now it may be salt. Cool, hip, funky salt. Thomas Keller may have helped to propagate the hip factor of salt by (and this is hearsay) serving a dish at his New York restaurant, Per Se, with a choice of three different salts. We get what he’s going for, and Keller is one of the few people in the world who can actually pull it off. If he’s got three salts on his table, he knows where and how each of them got there, the entire process from start to finish, because he is very much a purist of ingredients. Do yourself a favor and read the French Laundry Cookbook, don’t just look at the pictures, which are aptly referred to by Anthony Bourdain as food porn, read the pieces about the purveyors and you’ll get an insight into Keller’s process.

It’s all part of the current cycle of cooking being cool; where Food Network is pushing its latest group of personalities, some of who probably should still be sweating it out in the kitchen and not flexing their egos on TV and each new and interesting product will be bastardized to the full extent of the marketing department’s power.

So, we bought the reasonably priced grey sea salt and mailed it off.