There was once a time when you could walk into a restaurant and be sure of a few things.

You will eat more than you intended

The waiter will suggest something to make this easier and look at you with disdain if you say you don’t need an appetizer or a cocktail that costs more than your first car.

There are salt and pepper shakers on your table.

The first two of these truisms are still valid. However, you often find neither salt nor pepper.

I even have a friend – a professional with an important job – who always carries little packets of salt in the back of her purse for emergencies like this.

Personally, I’m not a salt junkie, but every now and then I eat a dish that’s desperate for some flavor. Sorry, Chef, but it’s true.

Here’s the problem: When you’re in a snooty restaurant, sometimes you feel a little intimidated, like you’re dressed too casually or the waiter can tell your car is 20 years old just by looking at you. You stare at a fork that seems alien to you, wondering what the hell you’re supposed to do with it.

This is not the time to prove what a peasant you are by asking for salt and pepper. Of course, if you weren’t so ill-tempered, you would be happy with the seasoning of your food, but now you are insulting the cook. At least, that’s how it feels.

That’s why my friend always carries her own salt packets with her so she can secretly sprinkle it on her food without anyone noticing.

I recently asked a successful restaurant owner what she thought about this topic. She told me that she doesn’t have salt and pepper shakers on her tables because her food is properly seasoned. Her food is delicious, so I would agree with her, but I know that’s a turn off for a lot of people.

Nobody knows who was the first to have the audacity to remove the spices from the tables, but this debate has been simmering for more than ten years now. It’s a little joke. Got it? Floating,

This was only exacerbated by COVID-19, as virtually everything was on the table, sometimes even actual dishes. And menus. I still want to know why I can’t look at an actual menu instead of having to scroll down in tiny font on my phone. But I digress.

Suddenly people realized that those shakers were sticky for a reason, because 10,000 dirty fingers had touched them before you. Yuck. Enter the brave new world of salt packets.

Then the salt simply disappeared, as if all the salt mines had simply been closed.

When you talk to restaurant waiters, they say, “Have a nice trip.”

Apparently, of all the items that seem to magically disappear from tables, salt and pepper shakers regularly top the list. They probably don’t disappear on their own, so we have to assume they’re stolen. This even happens in high-end restaurants, where presumably people who can pay $70 for a steak could buy a set.

Many restaurants remove the salt shakers from the table before dessert to prevent them from accidentally disappearing into someone’s pocket.

Sometimes when guests ask for salt, it is served in a small bowl with a small spoon. This solves the problem of germ-laden salt shakers, but I wonder if the small spoons would then disappear.

According to some articles from the foodie scene, there is also apparently a trend to make the tables smaller and squeeze more people at one table, leaving less room for unnecessary stuff like condiments.

Then there’s the issue of pre-salting. My adult children are guilty of this, and not because I taught them. In fact, I tell them to stop. “It’s an insult to the cook to salt your food before you even taste it,” I tell them, but all to no avail.

Once the appetizer is served, they shake the salt container like dice at a craps table.

This is annoying for a chef and I can understand why.

Even though salt is disappearing, many other spices are back in fashion. Fish sauce in Thai restaurants. Pickled chilies, pico de gallo, pickled ginger, chopped onions and cilantro. Chutney. Whatever, the ethnic restaurants we visit these days don’t skimp on spices.

And that’s how it should be.