Pierre - Hong Kong

 

Butter Photo Credit HK Epicurus

Restaurant:  This stunning restaurant, situated on the 25th floor of the 5-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel, is Pierre Gagnaire’s pied a terre in Hong Kong. Here diners can experience outstanding modern French cuisine in a stunning environment half a world away from France. Gagnaire’s protégé Jean Denis Le Bras leads the culinary team.  Diners expect—and receive--creative interpretations of classic dishes with seductive flavors that are truly worthy of the restaurant’s two Michelin-stars.

A vision of contemporary luxury, Pierre’s décor incorporates luxurious fabrics in a palette of charcoal, cherry, blue, and black highlighted with silver and crystal. Floor-to-ceiling windows offer views over Victoria Harbour while the central chandelier shifts from one sparkling hue to another. Atmospheric and dramatic, the setting is a perfect backdrop for enjoying the phenomenal cuisine.

Pierre Gagnaire, who visits the restaurant three times a year, is a wizard of innovative French gastronomy, and one of the most original and artistic chefs in the world today. Although his food is often described as ‘modern French,’ his style is deeply rooted in French cooking traditions.  The result is dishes that are easy to understand and unpretentious yet exquisitely presented.  

Chef:  Chef Jean Denis Le Bras joined Hong Kong’s Mandarin Oriental in 2013. Jean Denis was the perfect choice to lead Pierre’s culinary team, with his more than 16 years’ experience in leading restaurants around the world, the past eight of which he spent with Pierre Gagnaire. Before moving to Hong Kong, Jean Denis and his London team secured a second Michelin star and five AA Rosettes for Pierre Gagnaire’s Lecture Room and Library restaurant at Sketch. Prior to this, Jean Denis was head chef at Francois Plantation, Pierre Gagnaire’s celebrated restaurant in St Bart’s.

Butter:  Pierre serves Maison Bordier butter--salted for lunch, and unsalted and seaweed flavored for dinner. The butter rests on a plate beneath a piece of vellum printed with the abstract table image, from the Pierre logo. 

Commentary: When Chef Le Bras was working in France, he baked Kouign Aman, a round crusty cake, made with bread dough containing layers of butter and sugar folded in. “Kouign Aman is a traditional recipe from Brittany which you add the same amount of butter as flour! Everybody was surprised but they all loved it!” Recalls Chef Le Bras.

Pierre
5 Connaught Road Central, Hong Kong
852 2522 0111

Pierre Website

 

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

 

Butter Art - Part 1

I am working with a bunch of new restaurants. I will post their butter soon.
In the meantime, here is some butter art to enjoy.

Bishop Art
Bread and Butter
Part of the "You & Me" series

Justin Clayton 
Butter on Dish

Christopher Boffoli
Butter Business Bureau
Big Appetites Studio

Night Owl Paper Goods   
Congratulations! You deserve a big pat on the back!
Single folded letterpressed card with envelope

Butter Up Knife

I just received my Butter Up knife in the mail today. I found this knife on Kick Starter and pledged. It works really well.

The Butter Up knife quickly turns cold, hard butter into sumptuous easy to spread ribbons.

One side of the knife has a built in grater to aerate and soften butter making it easy to spread, the other side has a serrated edge for cutting bread. A wider blade helps to collect the grated butter as well as provide more surface area for easy spreading. 

Visit their website here

Vermont Creamery

 

Vermont Creamery produces high quality cheeses and dairy products using local ingredients while supporting and developing family farms. They have won more than 100 national and international awards. Vermont Creamery takes special pride in sustaining a team of family farms and creamery artisans with a collective goal: to make great butter and cheese for discerning and appreciative eaters, for home cooks and for discriminating chefs.

Vermont Creamery began with two young visionaries devoted to new and non-traditional agriculture, Allison Hooper and Bob Reese. While working on a dairy farm in Brittany, France, Allison Hooper—then a college student--took careful note of milk production and culture. After each milking, she set the cream aside. Natural, lactic bacteria took over, ripening it into cultured cream or crème fraîche. When she viewed workers churning the thick cream into butter, she knew she had learned something valuable.

Bob Reese, the grandson of dairy farmers, received a college degree in agriculture.  In 1984, Bob was in charge of a Vermont agricultural dinner celebration. He desperately needed a locally made goat cheese for the French chef’s signature lamb dish. He contacted Allison who was then working at a dairy lab and milking goats in Brookfield. Allison made the chèvre on the farm and Bob delivered it to the chef. The result was a successful dinner and the birth of Vermont Creamery.

Vermont Creamery cultures fresh, high-quality Vermont cream from the local St. Albans Cooperative, a coop of 500 family farms in Northeast Vermont. They churn the cream in small batches to yield a rich European-style butter with 86% butterfat, a silky smooth texture, and a uniquely rich and nutty flavor. Use the butter on warm crusty bread, at high temperatures for a perfect pan sear, or in pie crust and cookies for superior elasticity and flakiness.

Vermont Creamery
 40 Pitman Rd, Websterville, Vermont 05678
(802) 479-9371

Vermont Creamery 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

 

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.