3.15.06: Pepper grinding

I’m wondering what’s with the pepper grinding ritual that invaded U.S. restaurants a decade or 2 ago? I agree that freshly-ground pepper is a nice addition to many foods — like salt, it seems to bring out the flavor, to stimulate the palate. But that’s obviously not the point of this ritual — the point is social, economic, and psychological. How and why did it become a little ritual to have the food arrive and then be quickly followed by a man (usually a man) who asks, “Do you want some pepper ground over that?” He wafts the phallic object over your food like a wand and waits for you, the master, to tell him “when”. Then he is gone and may never return.

Wouldn’t it be easier to have a little pepper grinder on every table? It wouldn’t be harder than keeping all those refilled saltshakers out there, would it?

But that’s not the point, I suspect. What’s important is the ritual and the relationship. The servant and the implication of service… the feeling of being pandered to and pampered in a customized manner. One hopes that this little ritual assuages any impulses by the client to imperiously order the staff around, and sometimes it does seem to absorb these impulses, though not always.