Once neglected in favour of supposedly healthier products or mass-produced substitutes, butter is back, and better than ever, thanks to chefs who are adding bone marrow, chocolate and churning their own
It sounded like another fad – like the cereal cafe in east London, or the crisp bar in Soho. “This Colorado bistro is the world’s first butter bar,” ran the headline of an article announcing the opening of Bella La Crema, a US restaurant serving “flights” of handmade butters flavoured with spices or herbs. The comparison to beer and wine tasting boards jarred at first – but butter in its truest form is perhaps closer to wine than it is to crisps or cereal: there’s terroir in the pastures; technique in the churning; magic in the addition of bacteria cultures and (optional) flavours. And Bella La Crema, which has been delivering its beloved bourbon butter, rosemary and sage butter, house butter and chocolate butter around the US throughout their lockdowns, and has since started looking for its second site, might conceivably be the next step in a movement that has been quietly taking place in some farms, dairies and restaurants for years.
“It was in the Fat Duck that I first noticed it, around the turn of the millennium,” says Jay Rayner, the Observer’s restaurant critic. “There was a handmade goat’s milk butter with a pronounced cheesy edge to it. Then, in 2006, Stephen Harris at The Sportsman in Kent showed how he churned butter from local milk and flavoured it with salt he made by boiling the seawater from the nearby shore.” Thereafter it became “a thing”. No longer content with packets bought wholesale, restaurants started buying cream, culturing it and churning it in-house. Chefs pushed the boundaries of flavoured butter, enveloping herbs, spices, vegetables and meat into its golden folds. Those who didn’t make butter on site started to source it direct from small-scale dairies – and, as demand grew, so did the number of butter-makers.