Yep....butter and salt...makes even broccoli and brussels sprouts taste good.
Linda C

Give the restaurant your feedback. They should want to have it. Its an easy thing for them to fix.

DH swears that he gains 2 or 3 lbs after such a meal. We use salt at home too, but not so much!

I think most home cooks under-salt, to be honest. As someone with low blood pressure, salt's my friend.

Grease and salt along with alcohol and chocolate make up the basic food groups.

; )
lyra

That's right! If it tastes good and you eat enough of it, you'll get adequate nutrition.....

Oh dear, that's the problem. I LIKE grease and salt, as evidenced by my inability to eat just one potato chip. Sigh.

I agree, though, things are far over-salted, generally. Some people have high blood pressure, some low, some have other issues and some just like or do not like salt. My perspective is that they should keep the salt shaker on the table and let patrons salt to their own tastes.

I don't even want to think about how much grease and salt there was in my meal last night at Bob Evans, where we took Makayla after her performance on stage in "The Little Red Hen, The Musical". (grin) The restaurant was her choice, I had "itsy bitsy sandwiches". Three little slider sized sandwiches which were pot roast, pulled pork and sausage with cheese. All with dill pickles and I'll bet I packed in a day's worth of fat, calories and salt in those three "itsy bitsy" sandwiches.

Annie

Oh I hear ya. That's why I try not to eat out. We used to go out once or twice a week 10 years ago. Our favorites were Chinese dim sum and Italian pasta.

We used to patronize an Italian restaurant, ate there once a week. When I talked to one of the waiters whom we got to know very well over the years, he told us the chef used a whole stick of butter in my pasta dish. That's 1/2 cup of butter!

So we thought we would go for something less fattening, dim sum. I remember the last time we went to a Chinese tea house. I couldn't stop drinking hot water the entire time. We parked our car in the restaurant parking lot just around the corner. By the time we got to the car I was very thirsty again. It suddenly struck me how much MSG they must have added into all the dim sum! If you eat in a Chinese restaurant and order your own food, you can ask them not to use MSG in your food. But you can't do that with dim sum because they're all pre-made. That was our last time going for dim sum. Now, when we want dim sum, I make them at home.

These days I have no desire to eat out. I must be getting old and my body can't deal with the extra fat and salt any more.

Al

I guess I'm just used to plain steamed vegetables, which most restaurants around here serve, as well as home, of course. One thing I hate about catered meals is the greasy veg. BTW, part of the dish was tomatoes prepared with garlic oil. They weren't greasy, they were just done up. The asparagus was greasy. Teeny weenie baby asparagus doesn't need oil.

Re the salt, it's not a high sodium or low sodium thing. Everything tasted salty. I just didn't notice at first because the starter was the kind of thing that's supposed to taste salty. It wasn't inedibly salty. It was beautifully prepared. But it was definitely over-seasoned.

And salty and greasy like fast food. :)

John, good point. I will let them know.

Mmmmmm...........two of my favorite food groups.

Al, a whole stick? That is obscene. When I went to Amalfi with my mom for a week of cooking classes, we were both horrified and mesmerized by the huge chunks of butter that were invariably added to the finished dish (risotto, pasta...

I've always liked salt, but the amount of salt one adds in home cooking is nothing like the amount you get in processed foods, in which I include all fast food and some restaurant meals. And, at home you can use yummy salts - sea, kosher, flavored.

As for grease, I use olive oil pretty liberally. Butter too, but a stick of butter in 12 qts of soup is different than a stick of butter in a single dish (ugh). Does anyone use clarified butter, is it tasty and healthier?

Animal fat is a quick path to deliciousness, but I'm trying to be more patient and get equal tastiness from reductions and gelatin.

I'm immune to MSG, I think. Anyway I've never had any reaction to it.

I always assume that restaurants are far less interested in serving healthy food, than in serving yummy food. So we don't eat out that often. I can get yummy and (somewhat) healthy food at home, and I eat less in the process.

Why not ask the restuarant to go light on the salt when you order. You forget that they have a huge range of tastes that they have to satisfy.

I personally don't want some foods that haven't been salted during the cooking process - they are not the same trying to salt them at the table. In fact, I use less salt when I use it cooking than if I try to salt things at the table.

And maybe I use a better grade of olive oil, or the restuarant isn't really using olive oil, but I don't find it greasy. It should be very light and delicate.

Jojoco, no kidding. One whole stick of butter. It's a shocker, isn't it?

Dirtgirl, exactly! Tell them what you want and what not. If you don't, chances are they will feed you with lots of fats because fat tastes good!

I found this article online. Five tips to eat healthy at a restaurant. Pretty interesting read.

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: 5 Tips to Eat Healthy At A Restaurant

One other slightly OT thing that I've learned as age crept in.... the older you get the faster you dehydrate and you don't always realize it. So often I'll look at my skin and say, oops, time for a big glass of water. Instant revival, not to mention more energy.

I've had high blood pressure and it dropped drastically when I became unemployed. I don't eat near as much when at home. But I don't watch the salt unless it's extremely heavy as in corn chips combined with cheese, and so on.

Hm... I'm still learning the culture here. I thought I was opening a discussion of oversalting in fine dining. Oh, well.

As to tastes and telling them, this is the capital of ordering your food exactly as you want it. Happens all the time. But how is one to know that they over salt the food when ordering? The companion whose vegetables were too oily to eat had asked for little to no oil. It was still too greasy for her to eat. The meat tasted salty. Like a Big Mac. I'm not against seasoning. As Dirtgirl said, some foods do need to be seasoned during cooking. It's just the seasoning should enhance the food rather than being a whole separate top note.

This is hardly the first fine restaurant I've eaten in! I'm not ignorant. Please believe me. The food was too salty. And even if the starter didn't taste too salty I drank about a quart of water before the main came. Like the way they supposedly put salty snacks at bars to encourage drinking.

Sorry Plllog, the OT meant 'off-topic'. Which is inevidable on some threads.

What I was trying to say, and doing a bad job of it, is that I think that dehydration can sometimes be mistaken for too much salt. Foods will actually taste very salty when you're dehydrated. (Which you obviously weren't with that much water.)

I just don't understand why people can't read my mind! LOL

Beth

Salt and fat give foods their satisfying taste and texture, a good cook/chef knows when too much salt and/or fat will ruin good food, too much isn't necessarily better.

You probably notice that when you eat low salt or low fat foods, they are generally pretty disappointing - whether it's fast food, fine dining or made at home. Finding just the right balance is the hallmark of a very good cook.

A low fat or low sodium (or both) diet, is very, very hard to maintain over the long term because the food is just not very good. Apparently a high fat high sodium diet is pretty satisfying, if fast food is any indication!!

Too much salt is in the eyes of the beholder I am afraid.
I still remember with a shudder when I saw a man....a very fat man might I add....open his ham sandwich and give it a generous dose of salt....not to mention the pasta salad too.
My Father in law salted everything on his plate before tasting it...he had his first heart attack at age 46 and died at 67. I have had other friends who automatically salted MY food before tasting. I told him...I cook good food....taste it and then if you still think it needs salt...ask and I will get you the salt shaker.
I think you can become accustomed to the taste of very salty foods....and that restauraunt was not dumb...the chef knew that lots of people like very salty greasy foods....so he added salt and grease!

I think it's more conditioning than anything. I used to use a lot of salt, couldn't stand unsalted butter or nuts, etc. Now I'm kind of the opposite; everywhere I turn I find food is too salty. Sure, a certain amount of salt is needed to season something nicely, but not much. I find myself cutting a lot of salt out of recipes, and sometimes all if there are other significant sources of salt. Like if there's Parmesan in meatballs, you don't need salt. I don't miss it one bit. I wouldn't go as far as saying it's my rule of thumb, but when trying a new recipe I generally start off with about half of what's called for and only bump it up if I deem it necessary. And believe me, I don't like bland food.

Now fat, that's the hard one for me to cut!

pllog, threads tend to go off topic frequently, they seldom take a straight path. Those are usually my favorite ones too, we learn so much about each other and it's more of a group conversation than a topic.

Annie

Hm... I'm still learning the culture here. I thought I was opening a discussion of oversalting in fine dining. Oh, well.

I find the culture here to be the same as getting together with a large group of friends. Someone brings up a topic of conversation, and inevitably, it leads to other topics as everyone throws in their two cents. Difference being that in verbal conversation, sometimes we tend to forget what the original topic was and never get back to it. In print, it's easier to go back and say, oh yeah, THAT'S what we started out talking about.

You'll come across lots of threads that veer onto other topics, and then someone'll come along and post something to veer it back to the original topic. That's just the way things play out when people are comfortable talking to each other.

I think it's actually a cool thing when things go off topic, simply because I'm more interested in the interesting conversation being generated than I am in trying to keep things strictly to the subject, and that goes even if I'm the one who started the thread.

I find myself cutting a lot of salt out of recipes, and sometimes all if there are other significant sources of salt. Like if there's Parmesan in meatballs, you don't need salt.

I always marvel at recipes with cheese in them that say to add salt. I never add more salt to those, the cheese is plenty salty as it is. I think some recipe creators or publishers just always put in salt as an ingredient no matter what else is in the recipe. Ya gotta take the salt ingredient with a grain of salt so to speak!

---> Al, the article you linked brings up an (OT!) subject for me. I'm probably going to offend people with this but here goes. If you're going to ask for everything to be prepared your way and ask for your own ingredients to make your meal at the table, why bother to eat out?

That is not to dis the OP's point - if the food tastes bad, for whatever reason, I will not return to that restaurant. I don't eat out much but when I do, it's kind of nice to just sit back and let someone else do the cooking. I KNOW it's not healthy, I know it's full of fat and salt and other lovely ingredients, but so be it. If it tastes good, it's a treat. I don't eat out every day so the occasional bad-for-me meal is ok with me.

When I go out and someone asks a lot of questions about how things are made or what ingredients are used, that's ok with me. But if they start to tell the waiter how they want it cooked INSTEAD, that bothers me. Why? I just find it a nuisance, I'm sure the waiter does too, and the chef, if indeed there IS a chef, probably does too. Again, if you require your food to be cooked a certain way, IMHO, go ahead and stay home and do it yourself. Or go to the restaurant that cooks it the way you like it.

And if it's not a chef, but a cook who has learned to do things by rote, chances are very good you aren't going to get what you wanted anyway! But especially if it is a chef, that chef has most likely taken time and effort to perfect the recipe and doesn't WANT to fix it a different way.

OK - END OF RANT -

And sorry if I did offend anyone. That's just my own idiosyncracies coming out.

That's precisely why we don't eat out much any more. Our anniversary dinner at a really good, well-recommended restaurant was almost too salty to eat. When cooking, I mostly use herbs, spices and lemon juice instead of salt, so we notice over-salted foods even more than we used to. Don't have a problem with butter though. :)

Lowspark, I am not offended. We are all entitled to our opinions. As long as we treat each other with respect like normal, sensible adults, I don't have any problems to agree to disagree. That's the beauty of an open forum.

When I go to eat in restaurant I do ask the waiter to put the dressing on the side of a salad (no, I won't bring my own dressing), or to use olive oil instead of butter to pan fry my chicken. I don't think they will be offended that way. JMHO.

Al

LOL!!! What I meant about still learning the culture is more about learning how to say what I want to say to be understood. OT tangents are just fine with me! I was just feeling a little like when I thought I was extending a discussion we'd been having about salt in prepared foods (and I have learned that one is supposed to start a new thread here), it was feeling like it was more about what's wrong with Plllog that she didn't like the salt?

Beth, we crossposted so I didn't see your first message about dehydration. Up topic I mentioned that I had been drinking plenty of water all that day and alluded to the fact that I hadn't been sweating, because my first thought was that that might have been the culprit. As I was thinking it through I realized that I tend to drink a lot more water at restaurants than I do at home--but I drink plenty of water!! At home I might drink 16-22 oz. with a meal. At restaurants the busboys tend to be hopping refilling my glass. Thinking about that is what made me think that the starter, which was supposed to be a bit salty, probably had more salt than I knew in it. I'm not trying to be contrary or argumentative. Your point about dehydration was a good one. I'm just pretty sure that wasn't the culprit.

Re my own cooking, I don't over salt, but I use salt. And sometimes I'll crave a salty food and eat that. I was just remarking that when something was off in my improvised barbecue flavor sauce that I figured out it didn't have any salt, and a few pinches fixed everything.

Lowspark, around here we have a lot of crazy people. Rich crazy people, many of whom make their livings off their looks and have strange ideas about what will meet their nutritional needs and keep them 10-20 lbs. underweight for their work. Waiters and chefs here are used to people dictating exactly what they will and won't eat, and they go completely off menu. A grilled chicken breast with a squirt of lemon and a drizzle of balsamic? Very good, ma'am. The poor chefs are probably just grateful that they're eating anything instead of being photographed leaving the restaurant and getting the caption, "Give this girl a sandwich!"

Oh, the waiter! He had no idea what the chef put in the pasta--the pasta's made up earlier in large amounts (no restaurant is boiling your pasta to order) and yes, there probably is a big old glop of butter or olive oil for the whole amount made. I wouldn't believe that story.

What's wrong with you Plllog? Salt is good for you! :)

I'm trying to train myself to be sensitive to salt so it's easier to eat when I get old. Not working.

I've had a few recent experiences with the over-salting trend too, usually when I go somewhere in downtown Sacramento with my daughter. Our local paper's restaurant crtic often mentions the salt level of dishes he's sampled. It seems to be a frequent complaint and does indeed ruin a dish.

Since my husband is on a salt-restricted diet, we usually go to steak houses or "joints." At the nicer quality steak houses, he can order a steak without any seasoning, get a salad with the oil & vinegar cruets, and get a baked potato with sour cream & chives on the side. At local "joints" he can get a made-to-order burger with no seasoning or sauce and french fries with no-salt added. So at least we can go out to eat from time to time.

We've discovered that plain hunks of beef can usually be prepared by finer restaurants with little or no additional salt. Anything with a sauce is problematic as are most pork or chicken dishes. That's because of the tendency now to brine pork & chicken.

Brining has become an issue here as well. I won't order a meat dish that has been brined & I don't trust the menu descriptions so I always ask before ordering. Even as recently as fall '08 it wasn't a problem. Then, as if struck by the same salt lightening bolt chefs all started brining. A waiter once told me, "Oh, the brine doesn't make the meat too salty. It just makes it tender." I said, "Hmmm, if the salt doesn't penetrate the meat how is the brine tenderizing the meat? The salt has to start breaking down the meat for it to seem more tender, right?" End of our conversation.

Ya know, I live at the coast in New England, land of salt cod (basically descicated fish). Everything here is coated in sea salt. If I'm outside for more than 10 minutes I can taste it on my tongue. I can smell it as soon as I open a window or go out the door. A day in the garden means a salt encrusted face. I see every day what it does...rust & corrosion on our boat's SS is only one example. It's even hard on our home's siding/roofing. Many plants won't grow here...they lay down and croak 'cause of the salt. Soooo, I figure it's corroding my inside as well! rofl

Back in my early 30s when I was bodybuilding my trainer insisted I cut sodium out of my diet. It changed my palette forever. I don't do the "salt each layer as you cook" thing. I rarely add salt at all to anything. I've been accused here of having "bland food" because I don't even use salt in my CCCs. Oh, the horror. :) Truthfully, salt is a conditioned taste. I can't eat baked goods with salt. Salt does not enhance the flavor of chocolate, to me. It covers the taste of chocolate.

Oh, I also don't add a handful of salt to pasta water. When I eat a salty food it's likely the only salt, other than naturally occuring, I've eaten the entire day & I can still feel it's effects in my mouth for hours. I even limit the amount of oysters & clams I eat because they are salty...hard because they are so readily available here. Reducing salt was the primary reason we've started making homemade bacon.

For fine dining, I've learned sauces & gravies can be counted on to be too salty for my tastes. I always ask they be either on the side or not served at all. I use oil/vinegar for salads. Since the brining thing became the rage eating out is becoming a challenge.

/tricia

I bake a lot, so I only have unsalted butter on hand. It is easier than doing the math to reduce the amoount of salt in a recipe. I also eat little added salt--we don't even keep out a salt shaker. You want to add it? You have get the big Morton's container. But Tricie, I have to say that I can tell when a cc cookie doesn't have salt in it. For me, salt doesn't overwhelm good chocolate. It adds a wonderful edge that I sorely miss if it isn't there. It would be like cutting the crust off a good bread. Still delicious bread, but missing something...

You're not alone, Jo. I'm the one who's different. That said, my baked goods are always the first to sell out at our Church bake sales & when I was baking for DH's staff there would be a stampede to get to the cookie trays.

/t

AAH...salt....hence the origin of our word for money paid regularly for work regularly done....salary. The Roman soldiers were often paid in salt because it was a necessity and desirable commodity
Tricia I thought you lived in Mystic? Sort of on a bay, not on a beach with the breaking surf...in the time I have spent on a bay, or even the Gulf of Mexico I didn't find things coated with rime as on a beach....perhaps the inability to grow certain plants comes from the sandy soil.
I am amazed at how you could spend so much time on your Nordic Tug going up and down the coast when you find the salt air so distasteful
And you were a body builder??Wow...I thought you were disabled from the time you had a fractured spine from the abuse from your brother in-law? You have led an interesting life!
I don't like heavy salt....but sure want that half teaspoon full in my pie crust and certainly salt in my home made bread...that for sure!! ever forget the salt in bread/? EWW!
Linda C

I cut my salt out by not salting my food before tasting it. I stopped doing this with my first pregnancy. I can't say I miss it either. I really notice it when I go out to eat though. It doesn't bother me but now I get it when my boyfriend (now husband) would eat my cooking and drink a lot of water! That's now me after going out to eat. I am really into pepper now and I put so much on my food that people will comment. Love the stuff.

I never put salt into pasta water either, or the water used to cook potatoes. I seldom add salt to cookies either, but I can tell if I leave the salt out of bread.

Of course, I don't like the current rage of salting caramels either, and no one has complained yet about my salt free cookies or brownies. I figure the baking soda must add enough salty flavor in such things.

Annie

I always salt the pasta water....and potato water...well not so much the potato water as I usually add lots of salty butter...;-).
I compensate with less salt in my pasta sauce....the exception to that is pesto, the cheese can make that taste too salty to me, so I don't salt water for pesto pasta.
I will have to admit that sweet/hot/salty all together trips my trigger!! That recipe for cookies with salted peanuts is very very yummy to me.