SPQR - San Francisco

 

Restaurant images: Ed Anderson

Restaurant:   Michelin-starred restaurant SPQR is a Northern California restaurant inspired by Italian cuisine and wine. An acronym for Senatus Populesque Romanus, SPQR translates to “The People and Senate of Rome” which was the emblem of the Roman Empire. SPQR is set in a comfortable and inviting atmosphere in San Francisco’s Lower Pacific Heights neighborhood. SPQR creates it’s dishes from the perspective of an American Chef who has Italian heritage, and has trained in Italy, but at the same time is very aware of where he is living and what resources are around him.

Chef:   As a New Jersey teenager, Matthew Accarrino got interested in cooking while watching cooking shows and working in local restaurants, first as a dishwasher, then as a cook. He earned a degree in Culinary Arts in 1998, trained in Italy, and worked for some of America’s finest chefs. In 2009 he joined the team at SPQR as Executive Chef. During his tenure there, Chef Accarrino has won many accolades. Chef Accarrino was named “2014 Best New Chef” and “the mad genius of handmade pasta,” by Food and Wine. In 2012 Chef Accarrino released his first book, SPQR: Modern Italian Food and Wine.

Butter:   For the weekend lunch, SPQR serves a butter quenelle (oval dumpling shape) with a blend of edible flowers— calendulas, marigolds and cosmos.  Chef Accarrino mixes the flowers into the butter and sometimes adds honey, flowering sage, and/or bee pollen. This beautiful compound butter comes with pecorino, buttermilk biscuits and homemade jam. Delicious!

Recently, SPQR has been experimenting with buffalo milk butter. The buffalos are fed a good diet, and that leads to pure milk and white, bright, clean-tasting butter. Chef Accrarrino looks forward to offering buffalo butter to SPQR patrons in the future.

 Commentary:   Chef Accarrino considers butter a luxurious ingredient. He fondly recalls his parents making toast with cinnamon sugar and butter and how he savored the rich taste. “So, great!” he says.

SPQR
1911 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, California 94115
(415) 771-7779

SPQR website

 

Atelier - Ontario

 

Restaurant:  Ottawa restaurant Atelier offers a 12-course tasting menu of “New Canadian” food based on modern culinary techniques and technology.

“Plate after plate of mind-blowing dishes,” writes Adrian Brijbassi of Vacay.ca.

Chef Marc Lepine and his team create a culinary experience that averages three hours in length.

Chef:  After growing up in Kincardine, Ontario, Marc Lepine finished three years of culinary school and also earned his sommelier certification. Chef Lepine spent time working in Toronto, as well as cities in France and Italy. In Ottawa, he accepted executive chef positions with Algonquin Park’s Bartlett Lodge and the Courtyard Restaurant, twice earning the Canadian Culinary Federation’s ‘Ottawa Chef of the Year’ award. In 2008, Chef Lepine decided to open his own restaurant. While working toward the Atelier’s launch, Chef Lepine worked at Chicago’s Alinea Restaurant with Chef Grant Achatz.

Atelier opened in 2008 to great acclaim. The Globe and Mail called Lepine one of Canada’s “most original chefs.”  In 2012, he won the Canadian Culinary Championship in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Butter:  Atelier’s waiters serve two innovative butters: The first is powdered butter, made by freezing butter in liquid nitrogen and then grinding it to a powder. Explains Chef Lepine, “When it warms to room temperature it remains in powder form and can be spread like soft butter.” The second is whipped butter in a white tube that easily squeezes out the soft, rich topping.

 Commentary:  Chef Lepine’s first memory of butter is how it smelled while melting in a cast iron pan as his mother cooked crepes.

Atelier
540 Rochester Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 4M1
(613) 321-3537

Atelier website

 

Bibendum - London

 

Restaurant:   Located in the heart of London’s Chelsea neighborhood, Bibendum is the signature restaurant for the historic Michelin House. Opened in 1911, the Michelin House was the headquarters for Britain’s Michelin Tyre Company Ltd. “Bibendum,” a.k.a. the Michelin Man, is Michelin Tyre’s hallmark symbol. Michelin introduced their bulging anthropoid tire stack to the public in 1894; by now the Michelin Man is one of the world's oldest trademarks.

    Michelin moved its headquarters in 1985 and Conran Design Group began extensive restorations on the interior of the building. They restored many of the most prominent original features. Reopened in 1987, the newly refurbished Michelin Building was now home to Bibendum, winner of “The Most Consistently Excellent Restaurant” at the 2008 Tatler Louis Roederer Awards. Bibendum is famous for serving classic French food with a strong British influence.

Chef:  Matthew Harris grew up in Brighton, a town on Britain’s south coast where his parents ran a French restaurant and a wine, brandy and spirits company. From an early age, Matthew cultivated a love for all things gastronomic. He trained in several European restaurants and in 1987, started as Bibendum’s first Chef de Partie. Matthew Harris replaced his mentor Simon Hopkinson as head chef. Chef Harris prides himself on using the best-quality seasonal ingredients to bring a contemporary edge of flavor and style to his dishes.

Butter:   Bibendum’s waiters serve French unsalted butter in custom-made dishes bearing the image—naturellement!—of Monsieur Bibendum himself.

Bibendum
Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London, England SW3 6RD
020 7581 5817

Bibendum website

 

L2O - Chicago

 

Restaurant:   L20 Restaurant, located in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, is famous for it’s modern, seafood cuisine. Awarded two Michelin Stars in 2012, L2O appropriately stands for “Lake to Ocean.” L2O’s kitchen has two 100-gallon custom saltwater fish tanks. One tank mimics the English Channel and the other, the Pacific Ocean, and they provide L20’s guests the freshest seafood available. L20’s chefs employ the highest-quality ingredients while using classic and contemporary cooking techniques to create artful dishes.

Chef:  Matthew Kirkley, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, earned a degree from the Culinary Institute of America and started his professional career working in top restaurants in Philadelphia (Striped Bass), Chicago (Seasons Restaurant and NoMI) and Las Vegas (Restaurant Joël Robuchon). Returning to Chicago in 2008, Chef Kirkley was part of L2O’s opening team but left to work at other restaurants before rejoining L2O in 2011. Chef Kirkley started as Chef de Cuisine but was promoted to Executive Chef later that same year.

Butter:   Chef Kirkley maintains an extremely refined butter program at L2O to compliment the restaurant’s renowned bread service. He uses Amish butter from the Minerva Dairy in Ohio. Chef Kirkley creates a long, luxurious ribbon of butter, and perches it atop a specially designed ‘peek-a-boo’ butter dish.

Commentary:   “I can't imagine a world without butter,” says Chef Kirkley.

L2O
Closed December 2014

 

Epicure - Paris

 

Restaurant:  Located in Paris’ exclusive Hotel Le Bristol, Epicure is a gastronomic French restaurant with three Michelin stars. Bay windows and an impressive French-style garden set the atmosphere for the award-winning cuisine.

Chef:  At age 13, Eric Frechon started working in restaurants to earn money for a bicycle. He discovered a love for preparing food and eventually studied catering. Eric’s culinary career started four years later when he left his hometown in Normandy to join the team at La Grande Cascade in Paris. He trained at several highly distinguished restaurants including Hotel Le Bristol, Taillevent, Le Byblos Andaluz, La Tour d’Argent’ and Hotel de Crillon where he was awarded Meilleur Ouvrier de France. In 1996, he opened his first restaurant, critically acclaimed La Verriere, but three years later returned to Hotel Le Bristol as Head Chef. Chef Frechon was decorated as a Knight of the Order of the Légion d’Honneur by French President Sarkozy. In 2009, Chef Frechon was awarded his third Michelin star and was voted Chef of the Year by Le Chef magazine.

Butter:  Epicure serves both salted and unsalted versions of Maison Bordier butter. Chef Frechon considers the butter’s high quality to come from the freshness and richness of the milk farmers collect on their local Brittany and Normandy dairy farms. Epicure serves 11 kinds of home-baked breads with their butter.

Commentary:  Despite the bread variety at Epicure, Chef Frechon recommends a simple French white baguette. The bread, he adds, “should not be too strong to let the butter express all its flavors.” In Chef Frechon’s opinion,  “There is no good cuisine without butter.”

Epicure
Le Bristol Paris
112 rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré 75008 Paris
33 (0)1 53 43 43 40

Epicure website

 

The French Laundry

 

Restaurant:  The French Laundry, recipient of three coveted Michelin stars, serves French cuisine with a contemporary American twist. The restaurant is located in a 19th century stone building in the Napa Valley town of Yountville, California.

Chef:  Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author. He is the only American chef to have two restaurants earning three Michelin stars: Per Se (in Manhattan) and The French Laundry (in Yountville).

Butter:  The French Laundry serves two butters: an unsalted quenelle (oval dumpling) and a beehive-shaped salted butter.

Commentary:  "To make butter one must be willing to sacrifice a measure of free will and instead live according to the needs of animals.  Dairy cows must be milked twice each day, every day without exception.  Such commitment manifests in the profound care that Diane St. Claire invests into every aspect of her butter making from the animal’s well being in the fields of Animal Farm to the final enjoyment of her labors at the table.  It was this desire to see that her butter be truly appreciated that prompted Diane to send a sample to Chef Keller.  It was the most extraordinary butter the chef had ever encountered and he immediately offered to take all that Animal Farm produced.  When the opening of Per Se called for additional butter, Diane purchased additional cows to increase production just enough to accommodate the new restaurant, naming one of her new cows “Keller.”" - Thomas Keller Restaurant Group

The French Laundry
6640 Washington Street, Yountville, CA 94599
(707) 944 2380

The French Laundry website

 

David Burke Townhouse - New York City

 

Restaurant:  Chef David Burke's flagship location is David Burke Townhouse. Serving innovative modern American cuisine in New York City’s Upper East Side, David Burke Townhouse is a neighborhood fixture. The restaurant, which opened in 2003, wows visitors with an impressive wall constructed of pink Himalayan salt.

Chef:  David Burke is an American chef, an artist, an inventor, and an entrepreneur.  With 10 restaurants, a host of awards, and a U.S. patent for his unique process—dry-ageing steaks with pink Himalayan salt--Chef Burke shows no signs of slowing down.

Butter: Waiters serve tulip-shaped sweet butter lying on a pink Himalayan rock salt slab. Finished with Red sea salt, the butter display is like an explosion. Guests are encouraged to scrape off their desired amount of salt.

Commentary:  While Chef Burke was growing up on the Jersey Shore, his dad was a health-nut. “We had no sweets, we had no butter,” Chef Burke says. He remembers wondering why the bagels at his uncle’s house tasted so much better than the bagels at his house. “It was because my uncle served butter and my dad was a margarine guy!” he recalls. 

“My first memory of using butter as a cook was with Waldy Malouf, the chef at La Cremaillere.” On Chef Burke’s first day, Chef Malouf told him, “This is a French restaurant; you’re going to use a lot of butter and a lot of salt.”. It was 1982 and Chef Burke was shocked at the amount of butter required for traditional French cooking.

David Burke Townhouse
133 East 61st Street, New York, NY 10065  
(212) 813 2121  

David Burke Townhouse Website

 

The Box Tree - West Yorkshire, UK

 

Restaurant:  The Box Tree, West Yorkshire’s Michelin-stared restaurant, is situated in a nearly 300-year-old building. The classical French restaurant has earned a reputation as one of England’s premier establishments.

Manager:  General Manager Andrew Pratt started off as a Box Tree commis waiter in 1988. He worked at other venues for a time, but returned to The Box Tree in 2004.

Butter: This restaurant’s staff goes to extraordinary lengths each day to perfect their butter. Using only potato peelers, employees (not chefs!) carve hundreds of individual “petals” from bricks of butter. The staff sculptors—who make up to 50 servings at a time—then meticulously arrange the petals into delicate butter roses on a dark serving platter. The Box Tree has been crafting butter flowers for over 30 years. At this point, no one is quite sure who came up with the original design.

Commentary: “We eat with our eyes first,” says Mr. Pratt. “Presentation entices us to eat something—in principle, if it looks good, it should taste good too. We feel that if you create something, it should be perfect.

The Box Tree
35-37 Church Street, Ilkley, West Yorkshire, LS29 9DR UK
01943 608484

The Box Tree website

 

Viajante

 

Restaurant:  Located in London’s Bethnal Green district, Viajante opened in opened in 2010. “Viajante,” Portuguese for traveler, featured Iberian cuisine with influences from Asian, Latin American, and Americann Southern cooking.

Chef:  Following his training at the California Culinary Academy, Chef Nuno Mendes worked with some of the world’s most famous chefs and worked in award- winning restaurants such as Jean-Georges and el Bulli. Giles Coren of The Times (UK) named Chef Mendes "every restaurant critic's secret favourite cook.”

Butter:  Viajante served two homemade whipped butters: a smoked butter and a burnt brown butter. The waiters served the butter quenelles (oval dumplings) with freshly baked bread on a slab of olive wood. Chefs would dust the smoked butter with crushed walnuts and leek ash salt and serve it with bacon walnut sourdough. They sprinkled the brown butter with crispy chicken skin, Iberico ham and purple potato powder and served it with a roasted potato baguette.

Commentary:  Growing up in Lisbon, Portugal, Chef Mendes savored the olive oil in his family’s kitchen. The first time he got excited about butter he was just 6 or 7 years old. On a trip to France, he tasted good-quality Normandy butter. He remembers it as white, sweet, whipped, and sprinkled with crispy fleur de sel. “It was amazing,” he recalls. Although the Portugese favor olive oil, the archipelago of Açores has fantastic butter, Chef Mendes says, and this encouraged his life-long passion for the rich ingredient.

 

Rundles - Stratford, Ontario

 

Restaurant: Award-winning Rundles, in Stratford, Ontario, is this year celebrating its 38th season. With its modern haute cuisine, the restaurant is the perfect setting for a pre-theater, special occasion, or later dinner.

Rundles modern haute cuisine is layered, balanced, and full of harmonious flavours. Wines range from small, local, boutique selections to those of the great houses of Bordeaux. The service is gracious, gastronomically literate, and charming. The overall effect is that of time suspended, making one feel energized and inspired to live in the moment.

 

Chef:  Chef Neil Baxter spent his early years in Singapore and Malaysia, which exposed him to food that a six-year-old from Fife, Scotland, would not normally have experienced. He began his apprenticeship at age 16, in Cheltenham, England, while he  completed four years of college training in catering, bread-making, and confectionery. After travelling extensively, he arrived in Canada where, in 1981, James Morris, Rundles owner, offered him a position as Chef de Partie. After completing his first season, Baxter was promoted to Chef de Cuisine, a position he holds today. As well, Chef Baxter teaches at the Stratford Chefs School, and he also teaches weekend classes to approximately 90 amateur cooks each year.

Butter:  Rundles takes the bread-and-butter service seriously. Chef Baxter prefers to make his own butter, using fresh organic cream from Harmony, a local dairy. He and his staffers separate the cream, then drain off the extra buttermilk. Chef Baxter likes to retain a small amount of the buttermilk for flavor; then he finishes the butter by adding kosher salt. Baking bread on site for each service, the kitchen staff pairs the bread with homemade churned butter, served in custom-made butter dishes.  Each butter dish is made individually – which allows each one to be produced with slight differences – by Kate Baker, who is based in Montreal.

Butter Commentary:  “Growing up, we cooked potatoes that we dug from our garden, adding butter and fresh herbs. That memory has stuck with me forever,” Chef Baxter recalls.

Rundles
9 Cobourg Street, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, N5A 3E4
(519) 271 6442

Rundles website

 

All images and text copyright Alisa Wetzel or used with permission ©2023
All images and text on the Butter Journal website cannot be used without permission.