Tru - Chicago

 

Restaurant: Michelin-starred Tru is a progressive French restaurant on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Critically acclaimed, Tru offers luxury dining with décor like an art gallery.

Chef: Executive chef Anthony Martin builds works of art. An Ohio native, Chef Martin spends hours crafting “playful” presentations of elegant meals, working hard to continually surprise his diners. He creates plates so visually stunning that the Chicago Tribune’s restaurant reviewer commented, “It seems crude to disturb their perfection for something so prosaic as eating.”

Butter:  Chef Martin believes that we’ve been eating butter the wrong way for years. The perfect temperature to enjoy the real taste of butter, he says, is cold—much colder than we’re used to. The problem, of course, is that cold butter doesn’t smear easily across crusty bread. Enter Chef Martin’s “cold vacuum.” He locks a mix of cow and goat’s milk into a cold, vacuum-sealed cooker. The butter mix comes out airy and lush— “aerated,” he calls it—and very cold. On the plate, it looks almost like a cube of light yellow honeycomb. The technique allows the diners at Tru to spread cold butter and enjoy its taste and texture as if at room temperature.

Commentary: “I find inspiration from multiple sources; could be an ingredient, a season, a certain piece of plate ware,” Chef Martin says. “Then I create the dish on paper — sketching it out with all the key elements, until I have a clear idea of how I want it to look. Then I build it.”

Tru
676 N. St. Clair Street, Chicago IL 60611 
(312) 202-0001

Tru Website

 

Butter is Back!

“Butter is back,” declared The New York Time’s Mark Bittman in March. In 2013, Americans ate an average of 5.6 pounds of butter each — more than in any previous year since the 1970s. Consumption has grown 25 percent in the last decade alone and continues to climb. Industry experts attribute butter’s tremendous growth to two factors: the country’s gastronomic obsession with the quality, purity and preparation of real food, and the growing backlash against trans fats. After decades of dominance, margarine sales have been in a tailspin as research continues to show that the artificial spread may be significantly worse for eaters than natural butter.

America’s eating habits are also becoming more epicurean each year. Fully 93 percent of adults say they enjoy going to restaurants — pushing projected restaurant sales to $660.5 billion in 2013. Gastronomy is taking hold at home, too, as “the line between specialty and mainstream foods continues to blur due to the escalating foodie movement,” Food Technology magazine writes. More than half of US adults regularly watch cooking shows; two-thirds purchase specialty foods for everyday home meals; and total sales of specialty foods reached $76.1 billion in 2011.

Although the country is amidst a butter rediscovery, one group remained keenly aware: The world’s most famous chefs have always insisted that butter is key to gourmet dining. These chefs have elevated butter to new levels, crafting unctuous dishes to wow patrons. 

Ladurée - Paris

 

Restaurant: Ladurée is a French bakery and sweet shop that opened it's doors in 1862. This famous bakery has 57 shops on five continents.

Butter: Although Ladurée is most famous for their delicious and colorful macarons (colorful French confections), I consider them to be noteworthy for having a creative butter display. Their cylinder-shaped butter is wrapped in green foil. I found the distinctive butter package only in the Paris Champs-Élysées shop where they serve bread rolls. I ordered the fresh and delicate rolls just to taste their homemade butter, and was amply rewarded!

Ladurée
75 Avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris, France
33 1 40 75 08 75

Ladurée website

 

Frantzén - Stockholm

 

Restaurant: Restaurant Frantzén  in Stockholm, Sweden,  revolves its menus around seasonally available ingredients. Using local foods contributes to the precisely-executed meals.  For each, carefully crafted and churned butter is a delicious preface.

Chef: Swedish-born Chef Björn Frantzén opened the Restaurant Frantzén/Lindeberg in 2008. The establishment earned one Michelin star in 2009 and another in 2010.  After five years of accolades, Chef Lindeberg moved on to open a gourmet bakery shop and the restaurant became the Frantzén. 

Butter:  The Frantzén staff itself churns most of the restaurant’s butter. They begin by creating their own clotted cream. First they separate the fat from the cream by cooking it slowly in a gastro-vac (a type of pressure cooker). This way, the cooks can fully control the exact temperature and air pressure. After cooking the cream for 24 hours, they leave it to set and cool in the refrigerator. Once the process is finished, the fattest part of the cream sits at the top of the jar, just waiting to be easily spooned off from the rest. Restaurant Frantzén’s “extra mile” is to have waiters churn this carefully prepared cream into butter at the guests’ tables. The butter they make from the previous night’s clotted cream is less messy and solidifies faster than it’s full-cream counterpart. The churning only takes around two minutes, and once salted with Swedish sea salt, it is ready for the eagerly watching guests.

Frantzén
Lilla Nygatan 21, 111 28 Stockholm, Sweden
08 20 85 80

Frantzén Website

 

Chef and Sommelier - Helsinki

 

Restaurant:  Chef & Sommelier, located in Finland, Helsinki’s Ullanlinna district, serves organic cuisine in a relaxed atmosphere.  The four-year old restaurant features natural and fair trade ingredients and earned a Michelin star in 2014.

Chef:  Chef Sasu Laukkonen is a mostly self-taught chef from Finland’s capital city. He has worked for over 15 years in a succession of Michelin-recognized restaurants.  Before establishing Chef & Sommelier in Helsinki, Chef Laukkonen prepared food for noteworthy establishments in British Columbia and Stockholm, Sweden.  Once back in the capital, Chef Laukkonen mastered the art of fine French cuisine as the sole chef of the Michelin-recognized restaurant La Petite Maison.

Butter:  Chef & Sommelier staff start their butter routine by fermenting double cream and Finnish sour cream for 24 hours at room temperature. They whip the cream into butter, add salt, and then waiters serve the rich spread with flavored sea salt, rose hips, dried yarrow, or bitter greens.

Commentary: Chef Laukkonen believes that homemade butter should be an everyday indulgence, not just for special occasions.

Chef and Sommelier
Huvilakatu 28, 00150, Helsinki, Finland
358 400 959440

Chef and Sommelier website

 

Madera - California

 

Restaurant:  Michelin-starred Madera restaurant is located in Menlo Park, California, just 2 miles west of Stanford University. Madera is the signature restaurant in the scenic Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel.

The intent of Madera is to pay homage to the abundant history of this local region - and present cohesive cuisine based on this.

Chef:  Executive Chef Peter Rudolph is a Northern California native dedicated to the farm-fresh foods that have elevated the region’s cuisine to national prominence. The grandson of a milkman, Chef Rudolph comes from a family that prizes wholesome food. At home, his pantry is never without nutty, grass-scented Normandy butter. On any given morning, he says, “You’ll find me in my kitchen, happy with my fingers in the butter jar.”

Butter: Chef Rudolph strives to make his butter memorable. He and his staff mold Madera’s butter at room temperature into a stark cube and present it with a delicate pool of olive oil on top. To create a textural experience, they fold mounds of sea salt into every batch; this lends a satisfying crunch to the sensuous spread. Why put so much effort into a condiment? Because “butter is magical,” Rudolph says.

Commentary:  Chef Rudolph still remembers the instant he realized butter’s potential. He was a line cook in training to become a chef and cooking the same fish entree day in and day out. One evening, as he watched a large pat of French butter gently crisp a filet, he realized that the butter was communicating with him. When butter starts to boil in the pan rather than foam, it’s telling the cook, “Hey, I’m too cold,” Chef Rudolph says.  When the buttery foam begins to pull away from the protein, you know the pan’s too hot. “The butter is alive,” Rudolph says, if you listen, “it’s talking to you.”

Madera
2825 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025
(650) 561 1540

 Madera Website

 

Juni - New York City

 

Restaurant:  Juni, Latin for June, is appropriately named for the fresh, local, and seasonal menu it offers. Juni is located in the Chandler Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The 50-seat restaurant features four- and six-course tasting menus and a 10-course prix fixe which the chef designs.  

Chef:  Australian born Chef Shaun Hergatt has made it to the top in New York’s frenzied restaurant scene. Before this post, he served stints in Sydney, Miami and Washington, D.C., that helped earned Michelin recognition for the restaurants.

Butter:  Juni serves three delicately flavored butters in long cylinders, paired with freshly baked bread: sage-seasoned butter, traditional salted French butter, and the restaurant’s specialty—butter laced with truffle. Each spread is more decadent than the last.

Commentary:  “There’s nothing better than spreading butter on fresh, warm bread,” says Chef Hergatt. “It sets the tone for the rest of the meal experience.” His first memory of butter? Slathering his morning toast with “hand-churned butter from the farm that was unsalted and from fresh unpasteurized milk.

Juni
CLOSED

 

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