Peugeot Paris u'Select Salt Mill 7 Inch Black

Turn this mill over and there is a numbered ring in its base. Six marked settings run from a powdery dusting to flakes you can count on a steak, and once you click one it stays clicked instead of drifting loose the way a screw-top mill does.

• Six marked positions The grind is chosen from a dial, not guessed at by feel on a tightening knob.
• Black lacquered wood A sealed surface, so a spilled sauce wipes off instead of soaking into the grain.
• Seven inches of reach Tall enough to season a plate at the far side of a laid table without standing up.

A Dial Beats a Screw Knob

Most mills adjust by tightening a nut on top, which means the setting drifts every time somebody grinds hard. A detented ring holds its position, so the coarse you set on Monday is the coarse you get on Friday. It also makes the setting repeatable between people: anyone at the table can put it back where it was, because the positions are marked rather than remembered. The one thing to know is that the ring lives underneath, so the mill gets turned over to change it.

What Lacquer Buys and Costs

Lacquer seals the surface, and on a piece that lives where food is served that matters more than it sounds. Wine, oil and sauce sit on top of a lacquered body and come away with a cloth; raw wood takes them into the grain and keeps them. The cost is that a lacquered finish shows a scratch where bare wood absorbs one, so this suits a table where the mill is set down rather than a workbench where it gets knocked about.

Height Is About the Table

Seven inches exists for one purpose: reaching food that is not directly in front of you. On a laid table the mill goes over the plate rather than the plate coming to the mill, and three extra inches is the difference between doing that seated and doing it standing. In a small kitchen where everything is within arm's length, that height is just a taller object to store.

Settings, Refilling and Finish

Which way does the dial go for coarser? The ring is marked with dots that grow larger toward the coarse end, so you can set it by looking rather than by counting clicks in either direction.

How do I refill a mill like this? The head unscrews from the body and the salt goes in through the top. Fill it around three quarters rather than to the brim, because a packed hopper presses down on the mechanism and makes the first turns stiff.

Will the lacquer survive a dishwasher? It will not, and neither will the wood underneath. Heat and prolonged water lift a lacquered finish at the edges and swell the body, so this is a wipe-clean object rather than a washable one.