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If your idea of salt is limited to what comes in a shaker, a trip to the West Village will rock your world. The Meadow, which just opened Wednesday on 523 Hudson Street, sells over 100 kinds of salt, from coarse to flaky, volcanic to rose-colored, Mesquite smoked to salt mixed with truffles. Some taste strongly of mineral, others taste fresh from the sea. Shop owner and cookbook author Mark Bitterman wants you to toss your box of iodized salt. "Our focus is on finishing salts," Bitterman told the News. "We suggest using more complex salts at the end of the cooking process rather than adding in the middle." Each salt can be paired with a certain foods. He recommends a flake salt for salad dressings. The silvery-gray sel gris is ideal for finishing meats. A Fleur du Sel makes butter pop. Taster size salt bottles (1.2 oz) start at around $4 and go up from there. Two and half pounds of their multipurpose sel gris will run you about $14. View Here>>

Welcome to The Meadow, a scrumptious West Village newcomer stocking the world's finest chocolates, salts, syrups and bitters in a wee space on Hudson. Over 500 types of artisanal chocolate bars are beautifully wrapped and perfectly lined along the left wall -- like the sweets shops of yesteryear.View Here>>

After opening the first location in Portland, Mark and opened up the West Village location last week. One friend tells us he has over 130 varieties of salt, most of which you can see on the website. There's everything from Icelandic hot springs salt to sel gris, smoked salt to "Vanilla Finishing Salt" from Wales. Selmelier (yup, that's a word) Mark Bitterman has also published what he calls the first salt classification book ever: Salted.View Here>>

West Villagers will no longer need to worry about getting enough salt in their diet. The Meadow, a gourmet salt, flower, and chocolate shop, is now opened on Hudson Street.View Here>>

Salting as a deliberate act.Sounds a bit intense. And for Mark Bitterman, it is. It's a call to action, a plan to banish bland food. "Think about salting as a deliberate act," says Bitterman, author of "Salted" (Ten Speed Press, 2010), a 312-page devotional to salt. "This isn't about being a fancy chef. It's about how to make every single food you eat in your daily life come alive.View Here>> Also Published in the Winnipeg Free Press

The Washington Post Food Section wrote an article on Mark and the most important spice in the world, salt. An excerpt:  "As far as my research goes, kosher salt is obtained from the sea and does not contain additives. Mark disagrees: “I think if squeeze-tube margarine is your butter, hot dogs are your meat, and spray-whiz nacho sauce is your cheese, then I suppose kosher can be your salt. Otherwise, reach for a natural salt"...So what salt does he use instead of regular old table salt? “I use sel gris. Think of sel gris as a whole food: it contains 84 trace minerals occurring naturally in the sea, has irregular, chunky crystals and plenty of residual moisture that lends each crystal a supple crunch.”  View Here>>

Food and Wine Magazine featured Mark Bitterman and The Meadow in it's March 2010 Tastemaker column. The article discusses Mark's quest to find the perfect salt for every dish. The perfect salt for Vanilla ice cream? Iburi Jio Cherry salt from Japan. View Here>>

Mark Bitterman, owner of specialty food shop The Meadow in Portland, Oregon, has been obsessed with artisanal salts for years, and he’s found a perfect pairing for—believe it or not—vanilla ice cream! Iburi Jio Cherry salt is cooked over a cherry-wood fire for three days until its flavor is caramel-y, which, it turns out, might be better than chocolate sauce on your ice cream sundae.

Mark Bitterman owns and operates The Meadow, a shop in North Portland that specializes in exotic table salts, chocolates, wines and flowers. To him, salt is an ancient ingredient that surpasses even fire in its ability to enhance the flavor of food. Mark is the salt expert -- a selmelier -- and here he shares some of his knowledge as well as a sampler of artisan salt and food combinations to try at home.Read article