Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [2]
During that first long tour, and many subsequent ones, I picked up every imaginable type of food, from live eels to moldy cheese, but it was the salt that started to accumulate. Bags of salt would be tossed in cartons with journals, old pants, and spare motorcycle parts and secreted away. The collection was highly personal from the start. But over time it became more than that. Settling down with a family gave the salts space to breathe, and gave me even more time to research and cook with them. Old boxes were unpacked. Cupboards filled. Gradually the essence of my life took physical form: a lifelong pursuit of food and travel, curated in salt.
SETTING UP CAMP: THE MEADOW
I had always thought of my wife, Jennifer, as an art historian. She had worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty, and the Frick Collection and was now the director of a major art gallery in Portland. So I was surprised when she said one day that she wanted to quit her job and open a retail shop: “I want to surround myself with the things I love most.”
What to make of that? My mind raced over the possibilities: Omelet pans? Lotion? Scratched LPs? Old Manolo Blahnik shoes? Paperbacks by Thomas Mann? Cups? Half-filled photo albums? Burgundy? Antique mirrors? Books on Tai Chi? Mint? Jennifer is not an easy woman to categorize. All I could think of to say was, “Well, okay, I guess. Do you think we could find a spot for our salt in there somewhere?”
I drove out to inspect the spot she had selected. Located at the back of a courtyard on an obscure street in an even more obscure neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, was a small storefront painted in dark purples, blues, and greens. It had track lighting that hung down at the perfect height to shine directly into your eyes, creating the effect of staring into headlights as you enter a tunnel.
Perfect.
I spent the next five weeks painting, building shelves from old-growth Douglas fir reclaimed from demolished warehouses, designing and installing lighting, and buying jars for salt—meshing the realities of hidden nails and splintered wood with Jennifer’s glowing mental image. We piled the newly built shelves and tables with buckets of fresh flowers, vintage vases, and jars of salt and hung the walls with a series of incredibly beautiful nudes drawn in Conté crayon, charcoal, and watercolor by a local artist. Then we invited all our friends over for a party, and opened our doors to the public.
Strangely, people were interested in our salt.
At the core of our business is an interest in sharing the excitement and pleasure of discovery. There are virtually no written signs in the store because we consider it our job to learn about our customers’ needs, then educate them in person about what we have to offer based on what we’ve learned. Packaging, no matter how well intentioned or smartly conceived, does a very poor job of conversing with a customer. Plus, talking to people about food inspires a degree of candor that normally takes several martinis to produce. Within the space of an hour I may talk with a chef about problems he’s having selling the owner on his passion for squid ceviche; with a tourist who is hungry for an intelligible and convenient way to make cottage cheese and peaches taste better; and with a neighbor who is surprising her husband with cassoulet for dinner.
This experience doesn’t get old with repetition because it never really repeats. When a visitor enters the store and says, “Oh! Salt?” I hear surprise, curiosity, and a tinge of something else—a bond being formed. It feels like we’re suddenly alone together, stranded in a strange space, trying to recapture something just beyond our reach, something like a déjà vu; and suddenly I have to try consciously