On a recent Saturday afternoon at the House of Glunz, Stefana Williams hosted a salt tasting. It was the first time the Old Town wine shop had accommodated such a thing in its 118-year history; Williams, the proprietor of a sea-salt company called Lot’s Wyfe and a self-described “salt evangelist,” was eager for an audience, and she’d successfully convinced the shop that its clientele and her salts would be a perfect match. A Southern California native and former actress with bright blue eyes and a spiky blond hairdo, she stood behind a display case at the rear of the shop, waiting for potential customers. “Let me give you my spiel,” she said whenever anyone approached.
“Perfect,” Williams said. “Lot’s Wyfe is the name of our company.” She paused for a moment. “You know, the gal from the Bible who turns into a pillar of salt? In fact, one of our slogans is: ‘Sprinkle. Often. Never look back.’” She noted the organic methods used to harvest her salts and introduced the five varieties she’d brought along: a light pink one from Australia, a pale white one from Sicily, and a reddish-brown one from Hawaii. There were also two that Williams called “experiments,” cinnamon-colored salts from San Francisco Bay that she had flavored with essences of chipotle and mole.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Try them all.”
As part of the promotional literature for Lot’s Wyfe, Williams, 49, wrote a short essay titled “Confessions of a Salt Fiend.” In it, she says that when she’s gone without salt for a few hours she feels herself “getting twitchy for another hit.” “I think it’s because I have low blood pressure,” she says. Her mother’s experimental bent in the kitchen during her childhood is another reason for her affection for the stuff. “She would use us as guinea pigs, and we’d invariably want to mask, you know, the curried eggs on white bread. She made some really scary stuff, and if you could mask her food with salt it was a beautiful thing,” she says.
“In the 1980s salt got vilified,” Williams says. “It got this huge bad rap. I would go to this restaurant in Portland, and I remember taking the saltshaker and hearing this audible gasp from people. They were like, ‘Step away from the shaker.’ So I had to take it underground for a while, this salt thing.” In “Confessions of a Salt Fiend,” she refers to this time as the “Salt-Free Diet Dark Ages.”
Williams’s loft isn’t far from Morton Salt’s Goose Island warehouse on Elston Avenue. Despite her salt obsession, she says she’s never paid the place a visit. “But sometimes I do ride my bike right by it,” she says. “And then I’m like . . .” and she flips up her middle finger.
