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At C5, the sleek new restaurant located in the uppermost point of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, a much smaller crystal is making a large impact.

The apple-flavoured butter that arrives with the bread is flecked with pink sea salt from Hawaii. "It looks great," says chef de cuisine Ted Corrado. "It's a conversation piece more than anything."

And if diners order the restaurant's strawberry sampler dessert, they'll be talking about an unexpected flavour pairing. The dish includes a strawberry mojito in a glass rimmed with Tunisian pink salt. "You don't generally associate salt with sweet," Corrado says.

It's fitting that one of civilization's oldest and most universal foods is being so adventurously explored in an institution dedicated to anthropology and world culture.

But even outside of C5, exotic salts are showing up in restaurants and fine food stores, promising to include a greater feast for the senses than what's provided by taste alone.

At the 53rd annual Summer Fancy Food Show in New York, which ended on Wednesday, the exotic salt category was booming according to Denise Shoukas, communications director for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, Inc.

"It allows people to be creative, it puts flavour on food without adding fat and it makes a great gift. So it has everything going for it in terms of a specialty food."

Colours such as black, pink, red and grey are especially fashionable. As is location. France may still be the centre for couture but its fleur de sel seems boring compared to the salts coming from the Peru, Tunisia, Bali, Australia and

Hawaii.

Texture adds another dimension. Crystal pearl salt from a co-operative in Bali may be white but its pyramid structure, which naturally forms during the evaporation process, gives a "hollow crunch," as described by Devin Blaney, operations supervisor at Far-Met Imports, which sells exotic foodstuffs wholesale or online through Epicureal.com.

"They are another small twist on a dish without going to much effort," he says from Vancouver.

What are novelties to us are common in other cultures. Cyprus black lava salt is mixed with charcoal. Hawaiian red salts get their colour from iron-rich island clay. Grey salt is moist, unrefined sea salt from the coastal areas of France. So simple sodium chloride is not so simple after all. But an inverse relationship remains crystal clear: The more unrefined the compound, the more refined the location where it is served.

The Kobe Club in New York is restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow's recent foray into superpremium beef served under a ceiling of more than 2,000 suspended samurai swords. People can mix and match cuts (filet, striploin and ribeye) and choose sauces such as lobster béarnaise and black truffle butter. And every order comes with a selection of coarse salts - pink, grey and black.

Executive chef Russell Titland says that a little goes a long way. "The black is very, very strong so we try not to let the customers salt themselves." Instead, the waiters will grind it for them with pepper mills.

At Coast Restaurant in Vancouver's hip Yaletown neighbourhood, dishes receive a sprinkling of Hawaiian pink sea salt, grated fresh from a big rock. Black coral salt is used on foie gras or scallops because of its visual contrast.

Executive chef Sean Riley says the purpose is to surprise and delight. "Do we say so on the menus? No. Do diners notice? One hundred per cent."

Most chefs agree that besides adding intensity, exotic salts have subtle flavour differences. What's more, they are not used as liberally as regular salt.

That's because specialty salts can be very expensive. Artisan Salt, a line sold at Whole Foods, includes black Salish Smoked Salt from the Pacific Ocean, which costs in the $20 range for about 250 grams.

Incidentally, foodies who dabble in linguistics will know that the etymology of "salary" is salarium, Latin for a soldier's allowance, which was paid in salt.

The alternative, of course, is practically in our backyard. Over the past few years, Canada's own Windsor Salt has been making an effort to expand beyond iodized table salt. The company has added coarse salt and coarse kosher salt to its product range and it is the country's importer of La Baleine sea salt from the Mediterranean. Michele Verdon, marketing assistant for Windsor Salt, says the demand for even fancier salts is not high enough to consider more exotic varieties.

But awareness is bound to increase, especially when snack food goes for swanky sodium. The packaging for Hardbite potato chips, produced in British Columbia, touts Himalayan sea salt as an ingredient. And Toronto's Cheese Boutique offers 62 varieties of salt.

It all speaks to Toronto chef Claudio Aprile's theory that no ingredient should be taken for granted. "People are ready for a new experience," says the executive chef of Toronto's Colborne Lane, who is recognized as a master in the molecular gastronomy movement. "Salt has stood the test of time and we're now discovering it exists in this pure form that's not necessarily white."

Not that white always means ordinary. For special occasions, he will serve a "ginger crunch" fish dish with bee pollen panna cotta, apples, thyme and salt brought directly from the Bahamas by Tragically Hip drummer Johnny Fay. Describing the taste as "mineral-y," Aprile says the story is an added bonus (apparently, the package looked like "illegal drugs" when Fay dropped it off).

Rocker salt seems extraordinarily hip. But Aprile says that "forgotten ingredients are now becoming front and centre," citing potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli among the gustatory group.

Notably absent from his list were black-eyed peas.

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The low-down on exotic salt

Peruvian pink From the Andes foothills, it boasts a pale blush and a higher moisture content. And because it melts quickly, this exotic salt works as well as a seasoning as it does to finish.

Cyprus black lava flake The size and irregularity of these crystals would make them ideal for a steak seasoned by Fred Flintstone. The activated charcoal responsible for the salt's black hue adds detoxifying properties.

Hawaiian red The pebble-like crystals make a visual impact with their bold colour. Thanks to the red clay, these salts are said to contain added nutrients and flavour.

Balinese coarse crystals This salt may be a conventional-looking white, but the delicate pyramid-shaped crystals are hollow inside giving them a discernible crunch.

Himalyan pink salt is a fossil marine salt that was formed more than 200-million years ago. It is said to contain 84 different minerals and trace minerals.

Amy Verner