Is All This Salt Killing Us?

Doctors have long warned about the risks of excessive sodium. But in an era of Maximum Flavor, chefs say we crave it more than ever.

- BY ADAM PLATT

Chef Harold Moore prepares "Harold's famous chicken" at Cafe Commerce.

I'LL SHOW YOU some tricks, but you might not be happy when you see them,” says Harold Moore as we make our way back to the galley-size kitchen at his excellent restaurant, Cafe Commerce, which has been doing a brisk business ever since it opened in January on the Upper East Side. There are two tubs of salted butter in the snug space and another two tubs holding different varieties of salt, both of which Moore's sous-chefs are sprinkling liberally onto roasted chickens, into pots of pasta water, and onto great wheels of chicken schnitzel that are served with tufts of salted salad on top. “It’s all about those first two bites,” Moore says. “They have to be memorable—they have to pop.”

Moore, who has lost 80 pounds in the past two years on what he describes as a diet of “green beans and coffee,” is looking a little wistfully at the bowl of rigatoni carbonara that has been placed at the pass for his inspection before being whisked out into the crowded dining room. This sinful agglomeration of bacon, salted pork jowls, and salted butter that’s finished with clouds of salty Parm and a heavy egg yolk for good measure is one of the restaurant's best sellers. Ditto Moore's signature poulet rôti, a recipe he perfected years ago at a long-vanished fine-dining establishment called Montrachet after he'd ordered too many chickens for the evening service. To sell as many of the excess birds as possible, he injected a mix of herbs and salted butter under the skin, filled their salted cavities with a bread stuffing, and served the dish with a gravy made of buttery pan drippings. The chickens sold out, and he’s been featuring the dish at his restaurants ever since. “If we didn’t add a lot of seasoning to everything,” Moore says, “people would complain, that’s for sure.”