Salt Tasting at Wild Goose

I’ve also been meaning to post about our salt tasting last Sunday night at the Wild Goose Creative, but I blame grad school for the lapse in blogginess. (DAMN YOU, THESIS!)

Sunday was my first experience at Wild Goose Creative, though I’d been hearing buzz about them in the last 6 months. For some reason I was under the impression they only hosted events for children, probably because the person I heard about Wild Goose from has kids and goes to the kid-oriented stuff. Through the magic of twitter (do I talk about twitter too much? TOO BAD!), I found out that @lisathewaitress was hosting a salt tasting at Wild Goose. I already followed Lisa on twitter because she has a lot of interesting posts about food and eating local, so I knew it was going to be really awesome. When we got to the space, which is on Summit, right where you turn off from Hudson, Deanna and I were surprised by how built up the area is now. When I used to live several blocks away, on 19th and Summit, this area was a total wasteland, the only viable business being a shady looking “convenience” store with bars over the windows. While the convenience store is still there now, there’s also the new location of Leeno’s Cafe (a hookah bar that used to be on King), a few new storefronts (maybe a consignment store I think?) and Wild Goose. I really like what the area looks like now and I’m interested to see where it’s going to go.

The space at Wild Goose is so nice; really bright, airy and calm.

We sat down at tables set with place settings of 7 different salts: Iodized salt, kosher salt, murray river salt, sel gris, himalayan salt, cyprus black lava salt and alder smoked sea salt.

Lisa talked a bit about each salt and there were fresh cut zucchini, grapefruit and bread with her home-churned butter to sprinkle the different salts on.

My favorite salt was probably a tie between the murray river salt and the alder smoked salt. Murray river salt has a delicate flavor and a really lovely texture. The alder smoked salt, on the other hand is really strong and tastes just like a campfire. Lisa told us a whole list of things that we could cook with the smoked salt, but I just can’t imagine what veggie dishes I would use it on (do you like how I saw this as if I actually cook?). The cyprus black lava salt was the prettiest, I think. It formed in little black pyramids and was fun to roll over in your mouth while it melted. The pink himalayan salt reminded me of pebbles, very very salty pebbles and the sel gris was kind of a sea-flavored wet salt, and probably my least favorite.

Cyprus black lava salt and sel gris:

Himalayan salt and more Cyprus black lava salt:

more sel gris and murray river salt:

more murray river salt and alder smoked salt:

We also got impromptu lessons on how to churn your own butter (because Lisa’s was so amazing) and how to build a smoker and smoke salt at home. Also, I learned (and promptly forgot) how to thinly slice a grapefruit into slivers.

The whole night was just such a blast and I’m so glad we ended up going. I found out they have lots of reoccurring events, the salt tasting is actually apart of their “Too Many Cooks” series, which showcases different culinary seminars every month. I’m also really excited about a coffee roasting class that they’re doing May 23rd, which I’d really like to go to, if I get enough work done on my thesis by then. I highly recommend checking them out!

more photos of the event behind the cut