It happened to olive oil. It happened to bread. And now it is happening to salt. The stuff is diversifying, climbing up market and going chic, sleek and expensive. Once there was just kitchen salt and table salt. It came in round containers and on the label was a picture of a small boy running after a chicken trying to sprinkle salt on its tail. That salt was white as snow and ran fine and free as sand. Not any more.
Salt comes in flakes, in flowers, in crystals. It comes grey, pink, white and blue. It comes from rocks, from deserts, from lakes, from tidal flats, from mines, from barely accessible mountain fastnesses. It comes from Essex, Wales, the Guérande, the Camargue, Portugal, Spain, Australia, and now the Himalayas.
The latest designer salt to hit the market is L’Himalayen, complete with a Journey Notebook. “The product of unpolluted ancient seas dried up over 200 million years ago,” claims the packaging. “Naturally rich through water filtering by mineral-rich magma over millions of years.”https://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1187389,00.html