Amongst the pleasures we’ve missed in our adventures in gluttony is the joy of pink salt from the Himalayas. Say what? Yeah, the Paris Hilton-pink unrefined fossil marine salt that formed some 200 million years ago in the mountains of the Sherpas. It has a pinkish shimmer, a swell granulometry and crunch, and a slightly bitter pinch on the finish -- everything you want from the pink in your life.
This is just one of the many wonders to be found at Central Market Southlake's Salts of the Earth salt lickbar. There’s hibiscus salt and salt with Mediterranean herbs, black olives and Sri Lanka curry. There’s Fleur de Sel, or hand-harvested sea salts, from the Mediterranean and Atlantic. And much, much more.
There are various grades of smoked salts, including one smoked from incinerated chardonnay oak barrels. There are red clay salts that seal in meat juices when roasting, Hawaiian black lava salts and Cypress black sea salts with activated charcoal to provide relief from intruding flatus, among other things.
The Southlake salt bar has 23 salts you can taste, buy in bagged bulk or purchase in small plastic samplers, if you’re worried your blood pressure may launch your cerebral cortex through your nostrils. It’s history, one lick at a time. --Mark Stuertz
