ottawa foodies

Just wondering if anyone knows where to find fleur de sel in Ottawa. Thanks.

Lots of places ... but for me ... recently ... Nicastro's on Meriale Rd.

They carry lots of gourmet products and tons of Italian stuff. Including dried funky ... I mean ... funghi porcinis.

Pic are the two Nicastro brothers who started a store in Ottawa in 1972/3.

See: www.nicastros.com/

Awesome...thanks! I love that store, and never thought to look there.

I get mine at Costco.

I grind mine... not that I use it much.

Can I grind the white pieces of my Safe-T-Salt ?

The kind of salt I use on my walkways in the winter ?

Can I grind the salt lick in my friends field?

The kind of salt I use for my cattle in the summer?

Or you smartasses could just work out, wring out your sweaty clothes and let your perspiration crystallize. Natural and organic, right?

French stores in the Byward Market carry Fleur de Sel, I am pretty sure (Made in France at 281 Dalhousie St and possibly Belle De Provence at 80 George St). Made in France also sells caramels with fleur de sel in them - yum!

Loblaws and Loeb have also started carrying "tasting salts" in a variety of colours and flavours. On a different note, I bought some pink Australian "finishing salt" and some organic Himalayan garlic salt at HomeSense on Merivale.

Who knew there was such a world of salt out there to explore?

WTF is fleur de sel? Rock salt?

OK, wikipedia tells me something : en.wikipedia.org

A special type of sea salt.

My favorite type of sea salt is Himalayan rock salt, that comes from high in the mountains. It would have been sea salt back in the good old days - several hundred million years ago. You can get it at many yoga studios.

While I do consider myself to be somewhat of a food nut, I draw the line at buying salt from yoga studios. Similarly, I wouldn't buy capelli d'angelo from hair salons nor would I buy sushi from Big Al's. LOL! :-)

You can buy it elsewhere too FF - I know my wife has picked it up before and she's never set foot in a Yoga studio :-) The theory is that it is more like the conditions in the "primordial soup" whence life first arose on earth. I just like it because it is brown, and pale what things scare me - i.e. white flour (shudders)

Yoga studios are actually a good place to buy some food items - herbal teas come to mind. Though prices may not be best, selection could in cases be better since they may source brands otherwise not available.

Thanks Zym (for the definition). Don't I feel dumb.. I misread Fleur de Sel as "Flour Salt", which is something entirely different (and which you can grind in your salt grinder... doh!) My bad...

La Bottega and Herb & Spice have fleur de sel as well.
And what's so special about fleur de sel? It's "...delicate and sea-salty, tasting vaguely of the ocean, like the fine salt that you taste licking your lips after a day at the beach."
A very good write up on Fleur de Sel de Guérande here:
www.davidlebovitz.com

Being from Goderich, I so want to love Sifto but...really like La Baleine (found, among many spots, at Herb & Spice, La Bottega, some Loblaw & YIG), a naturally evaporated sea salt from France (not a fleur de sel). It's available in gros (coarse for grinding) or fin/fine.

An aside: Many aren't aware but deep beneath the surface of Lake Huron at Goderich, there's a city of trucks driving around; the Sifto underworld - a mine that's 2 km wide and extends 3 kms into the lake.

Wow...I didn't think this post would generate so much discussion. Thanks so much to everyone for pointing me to the right direction. This site is awesome. Now I can attempt to make my macarons with caramel fleur de sel filling!

I got my fleur de sel in Britanny, so would like to find a source that is the real thing. Most commercial brands of sea salt, including La Baleine, have chemical additives, to prevent caking. Check the label. Fleur de sel is pure salt, so is somewhat moist. Very expensive!