Pepper Imposter

Black pepper is, without a doubt, my most favorite spice. In fact, I find it quite interesting that it’s called a “spice” – I think of it more as a staple. A necessity, really. Like water or legumes or Snickers Ice Cream bars. I do not understand how people dislike pepper. It’s practically the most perfect thing ever – not as acerbic as salt or as fiery as cayenne or as halitosis-inducing as garlic powder.

To be asked to eat something without pepper is, to me, sacrilegious. And though I could never not shake, shake, shake black pepper on a dish I’m about to devour, there is nothing worse than the counterfeit, contemptible “pepper” that adorns restaurant tables.

It’s positively blasphemous. I do not understand how eateries and fast food joints get away with serving those gray and black flakes of dandruff. Horrific! Such an imitation.

For the love of food! Please, please dear restaurants and Dunkin’s, diners and delicatessens, dives and McD’s – please. Can you just provide your devoted customers with some friggin pepper grinders?

There is nothing better than fresh ground pepper. Especially when the peppercorns are black and red and green and white. My oh my! I kiss the glass those shriveled berry balls reside in. It's so unbelievably satisfying to flip over that bottle and grind away, to shake those fresh, fresh specks over salad. Or soup. Or, as is usually the case with me, an entire plate.
Pepper really makes the dish. Every dish, every time.

So why the fjkeajfka do restaurateurs – or households, for that matter – use the imitation stuff? It gives black pepper a bad name. And those packets! Those stupid, minute little packets. Do they really deem that a SERVING? They are such a joke. This isn’t salt, people. A pinch will certainly NOT do.

The pepper found in packets and shakers is pretty much The New York Times ripped and shredded and chopped into diminutive crumbs. That’s why they want you to recycle newspapers, duh, so they can make black pepper out of them!


Lets all start a boycott, shall we? No more using those faux flakes that dining institutions call “pepper”. It really is an insult to the Piper nigrum and its most hallowed, venerable vines.

Ah. In my dreams. If only I had the strength to reject that phony black pepper. Alas, I cannot. The second food is in front of me I reach for that paltry, pathetic shaker. Perhaps it’s mental, but I suppose I would rather suffer through the imitation stuff than eat something that has not been properly peppered.

So until pepper grinders are omnipresent on both plaid, plastic tablecloths and in polished oak dining rooms ‘round the world, I suppose that shaking the bejesus out of the sports section will have to suffice.

Sigh.