„If you have extraordinarily good bread and extraordinarily good butter, it is hard to beat bread with butter.“ As precisely said once by French chef and cookbook author Jacques Pépin. Now a store in Paris once again proves the truth of his words. At least when it comes to butter.
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Last month in the French capital, “Le Butter Shop” opened its doors – the first store in the city dedicated exclusively to butter. It offers about 30 different types of butter from small family farms and producers in Brittany, the Loire Valley, and northern France.
The assortment includes not only regular butter. Here you can find butter flavored with shallot garlic, pepper, seaweed, wild garlic, lemon, and green pepper.
According to the French Ministry of Agriculture, one resident of the country consumes on average about 8 kilograms of butter per year. Therefore, according to the store owner Erwan Leo, such a place could have been expected a long time ago.
Customers can taste the butter with a spoon before buying anything. In the store, it can be purchased from a 10-gram piece to a kilogram block.
And if butter with scallion, pepper, or seaweed does not entice, sweet options are also offered: vanilla, raspberry, strawberry, and chocolate.
“Most people do not expect to like raspberry butter or chocolate butter. And when they taste it, they say: ‘Wow, okay, I didn’t expect this,’” said E. Leo.
Besides the butter store, he also organizes wine tastings. According to the man, butter should be consumed similarly to wine – to enhance the dish, not just to eat as much as possible.
“The goal is not to get drunk,” he joked, adding that butter tasting has much in common with wine tasting.
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“You take a spoonful, place it on the palate, on the tongue, let it melt a little, and then the flavors start to unfold one after another.”
According to E. Leo, to truly enjoy rich butter, one should behave like Parisians: walk a lot and remember moderation.
“We do not eat more than four tartines a day,” he said.
“Italians choose olive oil, we choose butter. We learn to use it properly.”
Farmers producing butter for “Le Butter Shop” select certain breeds of cows and richer milk. According to E. Leo, just an additional 2–3 percentage points of milk fat “really makes a huge difference.”
The small store is not short of visitors – it was made famous by social networks, and now four employees work here.
“It was crazy from day one,” said E. Leo. “Most people come thinking to taste one or two butters, but in the end, they taste 25 because they are just so curious.”
And what’s next? Croissant-flavored butter. And maybe violet flowers.
“It’s an endless field,” says E. Leo.
“Le Butter Shop” is located at Rue Bouchut 5, Paris, just a few steps from the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower.
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