David Toutain - Paris

 

Images copyright Thai Toutain

Restaurant: Chef David Toutain’s namesake restaurant is located in the Seventh Arrondissement and was named “One of the most exciting restaurants in Paris,” by Alexander Lobrano, award winning food writer. Creative, friendly, and open, restaurant David Toutain is full of light and is decorated in natural materials of oak, concrete, and glass. Vegetables are at the forefront of Toutain’s daily changing menu.

The restaurant received a Michelin Star in 2015, and Amy McKeever of Eater.com calls its menus “inventive, eclectic and hyper-seasonal.”

Chef:  A native of Flers, Normandy, David Toutain is the grandson of farmers. David, inspired by summers of eating fresh picked vegetables from his grandparent’s garden, naturally gravitated towards cooking.  As a young man, David got a job at Arpége, Alain Passard’s restaurant in St.-Germain-des-Prés. Within a year he was Alain Passard’s under head chef. At Arpége, David spent three years experimenting with vegetable cooking. David continued to work under many culinary heavyweights including Bernard Loiseau and Marc Veryrat. David describes his time with Chef Veyrat as an "amazing experience," as he learned to taste and cook mountain plants, herbs, and flowers. After stints at Mugaritz (Spain) and Corton (New York), Chef Toutain returned to France and joined the restaurant Agapé Substance. Part of the restaurant’s great success was due to the starring role that vegetables played. In 2013, Chef Toutain spent a year traveling the world and returned in 2014 to open his eponymous restaurant.

Butter:  David Toutain serves traditional raw butter which he says reminds him of the butter he ate on his grandparent’s farm in rural Normandy. Chef Toutain wants the presentation to be handmade and raw, like the product. “I like things natural, with their imperfections,” he adds. Waiters bring to the table a ball of butter served with a roll sitting on hay.

David Toutain
29 Rue Surcouf, 75007 Paris, France
33 1 45 50 11 10

David Toutain website

 

Narisawa - Tokyo

 

Restaurant:  Two-Michelin star restaurant Narisawa offers classical French cooking using fresh Japanese ingredients. Located in Tokyo’s Minato ward, Narisawa follows its namesake chef’s philosophical theme: “The harmony of sustainability and gastronomy.”  Chef Narisawa believes that “Guests should fall under the spell of the season,” consuming only freshly grown seasonal ingredients cooked to perfection. For six years in a row, Restaurant Magazine has listed Narisawa on their World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. In 2014, they listed Narisawa as 14th out of 50; in 2013, they named Narisawa for their inaugural Sustainable Restaurant Award.

Chef:  Yoshihiro Narisawa was born in Aichi prefecture in 1969 to a baker and a maker of western-style sweets. As a teenager, Narisawa travelled to Europe and worked in France, Switzerland, and Italy.  After eight years of training with European chefs, Narisawa returned to Japan in 1996 and opened his first restaurant La Napoule. In 2003, the chef moved to Tokyo and re-opened the restaurant, naming it Les Créations de Narisawa. Finally, in 2011, he renamed it Narisawa. He promotes organic and natural ingredients as a part of French and Japanese cuisine. “It’s the role of the chef to support (organic) producers,” he says.

Butter:  Narisawa’s bread and butter presentation is amazing. The butter looks like a stone covered in moss. The Narisawa staff form chilled butter into stone shapes. Meanwhile, they pour boiling water over olives, dry them in the oven, puree the dried olives, strain them through cheesecloth and apply a layer of the olive paste over the butter. Next they blend spinach and water, strain the mixture, then heat it to drive off the liquid. They spray the fine green mist onto the olive-covered butter and decorate it with seasonal edible herbs. The butter arrives on your plate looking like a mossy stone. When you cut into the “stone,” you find the fresh and flavorful butter. The butter comes served with an equally amazing forest bread. The video below shows how the Narisawa staff creates their forest bread.

Narisawa
107-0061 2-6-15 Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
el +81-3-5785-0799


Visit Narisawa's website here

 

Hof van Cleve - Kruishoutem, Belgium

 

Restaurant:   With its three Michelin Stars, Hof van Cleve is a Belgian dining treasure. The restaurant serves modern Belgian cuisine from a country farmhouse in the Eastern Flanders Province of Kruishoutem, 45 miles west of Brussels. Hof van Cleve’s success is considered, by head chef Peter Goossens, to be a “team effort.” Chef Goossens’ wife Lieve oversees the front-of-house. Together they have kept Hof van Cleve listed among the World’s 50 Best Restaurants for the past nine years.

Chef:   Belgian Chef Peter Goossens trained at the hotel school Ter Duinen in Koksijde. Chef Goossens worked in Paris before opening his first restaurant in 1987.  Five years later he started the restaurant Hof van Cleve and has won several awards for the eatery. He became one of the youngest chefs with two Michelin stars. He received a score of 19.5/20 in the French restaurant guide Gault Millau. Goossens is also a Knight in the Order of Leopold, Belgium’s highest order, honoring King Leopold I.

Butter:   Hof van Cleve waiters deliver a tray arranged with unpasteurized salted butter, pasteurized unsalted butter, Fleur de sel, pepper and several kinds of bread, mostly sourdoughs. They obtain the salted butter from a French fromagerie and the unsalted butter from a local farmer. Belgian ceramic designer Studio Pieter Stockmans custom-makes the minimal white serving dishes.  

Commentary:   “I have a relationship with the craft of making nice bread!” says Chef Goossens. “And what is bread without butter?” Hof van Cleve purchases butter and buttermilk from separate farms. “The farmers who make the best butter,” Goosens declares, “make the worst buttermilk.” He also contends that those who make fantastic buttermilk make inferior butter.

Hof van Cleve
Riemegemstraat 1, 9770 Kruishoutem, Belgium
32 9 383 58 48
Hof van Cleve website

 

Lasarte - Barcelona

 

Restaurant:   Lasarte Restaurant is much more than Chef Martin Berasategui’s gastronomic vision for Barcelona. It is a “spiritual project” in which the Chef and his team strive to entice diners with every aroma and flavor of Lasarte’s cuisine. Located in Barcelona’s city center, Lasarte offers innovative dishes and traditional Basque specialties.  Each dish on the menu contains the best available produce and other ingredients cooked with a passion for excellence. Lasarte opened in 2006;  it won its first Michelin star that year and its second star in 2009.

Chefs:  Basque-born Chef Martin Berasategui is recipient of seven Michelin stars at his various restaurants around the world.  Chef Berasategui partnered with Italian native, Chef Paolo Casagrande to open M.B., the signature restaurant at Spain’s Ritz Carlton Abama Golf and Spa Resort. The successful partnership laid the foundation for the two chefs’ long-term collaboration at Lasarte, where Casagrande is the Chef de Cuisine.

Butter:   Lasarte serves five homemade butters, salted, beetroot, spinach, tomato, and mushroom. 

Restaurant Lasarte
Carrer de Mallorca, 259, 08008 Barcelona, Spain
(+34) 93 445 32 42

Lasarte website

 

L’air du Temps - Éghezée, Belgium

 

Restaurant:  L’air du Temps restaurant, located in Éghezée, Belgium, 45 minutes south of Brussels, combines Belgian and Korean cuisine. The restaurant’s theme centers on Contemporary Terroir.  Terre is French for land.  Terroir, with regards to food, signifies sense and uniqueness of place, including soil, customs, technique, people-- all that is involved in producing local cuisine. With its two Michelin-stars, the restaurant sits amidst a renovated farm complex where the chef’s team cultivates the majority of vegetables and spices they serve to diners.

Chef:  When Sanghoon Degeimbre was 5 years old, he was adopted into a large Belgian family along with his younger brother.  As a child, Degeimbre helped prepare meals for his family and discovered a love of cooking. Degeimbre gained a further passion for food and wine while working in catering and in restaurants. After starting his professional career as a sommelier, Chef Degeimbre became a self-taught chef and in 1997 opened his own restaurant, L'air du Temps. 

Butter:  L’air du Temps serves both a salted butter and a ponzu butter. Ponzu is a citrus-based sauce commonly used in Japanese cuisine. L’air du Temps purchases butter locally from the Van Vynckt farm in Upigny, Belgium. The staff serves their unique butter with homemade bread, olive oil and Maldon salt.

L'air du Temps
Rue de la Croix Monet 2, 5310 Éghezée, Belgium
+32 81 81 30 48

L'air du Temps website

 

 

Guy Savoy - Paris

 

I met with Chef Savoy early in the morning as they were preparing for the day. We sat down and had a nice talk about butter. He was kind and generous with his time and feelings about butter. He gave us a tour of the restaurant, introducing the artwork and details of the design. One of the highlights was when he took us into the kitchen. Bustling with people and fresh food everywhere, the kitchen was alive. Everyone was kind and welcoming— an experience I won’t soon forget.

Restaurant:  Walking into Parisian restaurant Guy Savoy is like entering an art gallery. Paintings line the walls and sculptures sit incased in glass cabinets. The food’s exquisite flavor and design display another kind of artwork.  Among many other accolades, Guy Savoy’s nouvelle cuisine has earned the establishment three Michelin stars.  The influential French restaurant guide Gault Millau awarded Chef Guy Savoy five toques.

 

Chef:  Guy Savoy states that he was “determined to be a chef, and nothing else.”  At age 15, he began apprenticeships and training with a French chocolatier. From there he worked and trained in numerous restaurants. In 1980, Guy Savoy opened his eponymous restaurant in Paris. He earned his first Michelin star a year later, a second in 1985, and a third in 2002. Named one of Europe’s top chefs by LuxuryTravel.com, Guy Savoy owns five other restaurants--three in Paris, one in Las Vegas, and one on an exotic island, The Pearl-Qatar. In addition to Chef Savoy’s culinary awards, he received the title of Officer of the Légion d’Honneur from the President of France.

Butter:   Glass dishes in numerous hues and sizes grace each table. Custom-made by Parisian glass artist Laurent Beyne, these delicate receptacles resemble water droplets, each cradling a different ingredient. Two hold butter: Maison Bordier salted butter and unsalted butter from Normandy. The other dishes present flake salt from Brittany, Malaysian pepper, and votive candles.

Commentary:   “Butter is King,” says Chef Savoy. “I consider butter as one of the main ingredients of French cooking, providing that it is used at the right moment and at the right temperature; that means fresh or cooked butter but never burnt.” Chef Savoy cherishes the flavor of butter. “Butter is like wine,” he says, “with many different flavors. Every region has its distinct flavor.” Chef Savoy told me that his favorite ways to eat butter is to place “very cold butter on grilled bread with a sardine in oil or some radishes on the top.” 

Guy Savoy
18 Rue Troyon, 75017, Paris, France
33 1 43 80 40 61

Guy Savoy website

 

Le Diane - Paris

 

Restaurant: Le Diane is a Michelin-starred restaurant overlooking the lush gardens of the luxury Hôtel Fouquet's Barrière, just a short stroll from the Champs Elysees. Le Diane offers an extraordinary culinary experience in French Gastronomy.

Chef:  Brittany native Chef Jean-Yves Leuranguer was the son of a cook. He grew up around food knowing from an early age that he would be a chef. After his schooling, he interned at some of France’s finest hotel restaurants and the internships led to jobs. In 2003, Chef Leuranguer was appointed executive chef at the renowned Fouquet's restaurant. Three years later he became head chef of the kitchens at Hotel Fouquet's Barrière. Today he oversees the cuisine for five restaurants, including Le Diane.

Butter:  Le Diane serves Maison Bordier butter three ways: unsalted, smoked and salted, and flavored with seaweed.

Commentary:  Chef Leuranguer remembers that as a child in Brittany, his parents would send him to get butter from a local farm. He enjoyed watching the farmer pumping the handle on the churn and beating the buttermilk from the butter. 

In his childhood home, the family ate only salted butter (typical of Brittany).  When he attended cooking school, however, he encountered only unsalted butter. He couldn't help but salt it. When he began working in Paris, he first encountered pasteurized sweet butter, but still preferred the home-churned butter of Brittany. In time, though, the dairies in Brittany changed their cows’ diet from grass to corn silage. When Leuranguer returned home to visit his parents, he found that the taste of the local butter had drastically changed and he could no longer enjoy its new stronger flavor. 

LE DIANE
Fouquet's Barrière Hotel 
46 Avenue George V, 75008 Paris, France
33 1 40 69 60 60

Le Diane website

 

Saaga - Helsinki

 

Restaurant: Saaga is located in the heart of Helsinki, Finland’s capital city. A traditional Lappish restaurant, Saaga offers the genuine taste, atmosphere and experience of Lapland. The name Lapland refers to the land inhabited by the Sami people, indigenous to northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In the Sami language, “Saaga” means “story.” Saaga’s chefs co-operate with several small Lappish and Finnish food producers to guarantee good-quality and specialized ingredients. Their menu offers northern delicacies such as bear, reindeer, mushrooms, Arctic char (cold-water fish), and Lappish cheese. Even the tableware is authentically Lappish: wooden mugs, cast iron pots and wooden platters. Saaga gives its guests an authentic Lappish experience without the long trip to Lappland.

Butter:  Saaga’s waiters serve juniper berry butter with homemade barley bread and potato rieska -Lappish flat bread with fresh cubes of Juniper berry butter.

 

Commentary:  “Butter,” say the Saaga chefs, “is a base for everything! It gives the right taste, texture and richness to food.”

Saaga
Bulevardi 34, 00120 Helsinki, Finland
358 9 7425 5544 

Saaga Website

 

West - Vancouver

 

Restaurant:   Recognized by critics as the ‘jewel in Vancouver's culinary crown,’ West restaurant serves contemporary coastal Canadian cuisine. West delivers seasonal ingredients in artfully realized classic dishes. Recent awards include the 2014 Four-Star Restaurant Award from Forbes Travel Guide and the Wine Spectator’s 2013-2014 'Best of' Award of Excellence.

Chef:   Raised in Calgary, Alberta, Quang Dang moved to Vancouver in 1998 to study engineering. Part-time restaurant jobs revealed his interest and talent at cooking and lead him to pursue a culinary career. Quang Dang began as West’s junior sous chef, moved on to work in some of Vancouver’s finest restaurants, and eventually returned to West as executive chef in 2011.

Butter Details:  West’s kitchen staff whip butter with extra virgin olive oil and Maldon salt. They form the butter into little domes, top them with salt, and serve them on chilled glass plates with crusty, freshly baked rolls. Because the recipe includes olive oil, diners can easily spread the butter.  The rich combination gives guests a memorable first impression.

Commentary:   Chef Dang has two lasting childhood memories of butter. The first involves making cookies with his mother and creaming the butter with an electric mixer. The second memory is of sitting at the breakfast table, spreading butter on warm crumpets, and watching it melt into the crusty crags and voids. 

Chef Dang still uses many of the butter cooking techniques he learned in culinary school. “I don't think that I could live without brown butter,” he confesses.

West   
2881 Granville Street, Vancouver, British Columbia   
(604) 738-8938

West website

 

L'Enclume - Cumbria, UK

 

Restaurant:  L’Enclume, a two-starred Michelin restaurant, opened in the historic village of Cartmel, England in 2002.  Chef and owner Simon Rogan chose to avoid the restraint of a set menu and instead to use fresh, seasonal, locally sourced ingredients. He and his staff gather many of the raw ingredients from Chef Rogan's farm just hours before cooking and serving. The appropriately named L’Enclume--French for ‘the anvil’-- is situated in an 800-year-old former smithy (blacksmith shop).

Chef:  Simon Rogan is one of the UK’s most accomplished and well-respected native chefs. His relationship with the land and extreme commitment to local and seasonal produce shows admirably in his award-winning cuisine. Chef Rogan’s many accolades include “Best Restaurant in the UK” by the Good Food Guide in 2014 and “Chef of the Year” and “Restaurateur of the Year 2013” by The Catey Awards. A culinary dynamo, Chef Rogan has many ventures including one pub, five restaurants, a culinary think tank, and a 12-acre farm. How does he do it all, and do it so well? 

Butter:  L'Enclume serves an unpasteurized cow's milk butter, which is unsalted, whipped until light and fluffy and served on a large gray pebble.

Commentary:  A butter-lover for as long as he can remember, Chef Rogan remarks, “I ADORE butter--it is my favorite thing to eat.”  But he can't have just a little butter, he confesses. “I have to have lashings of it!” 

L'Enclume
Cavendish Street, Cartmel, Nr Grange over Sands, Cumbria, LA11 6PZ UK
44 15395 36362

L'Enclume website

 

All images and text copyright Alisa Wetzel or used with permission ©2023
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