“If you have extraordinary bread and extraordinary butter, it’s hard to beat bread and butter.”
How right French chef and author Jacques Pépin was when he said those enduring words. And a boutique in Paris is further proving him right. About the butter part, at least.
Billed as the French capital’s first shop entirely dedicated to butter, Le Butter Shop opened its doors last month and offers 30 varieties of France’s favourite fat – from small family producers in Brittany, the Loire Valley and northern France, with varieties including flavoured kinds like shallot, pepper, seaweed, wild garlic and lemon with green pepper.
France eats around 8 kilograms of butter per person a year, according to the agriculture ministry, so it was about damn time.
Customers can taste by the spoonful before buying anything from a 10-gram pat to a kilogram block. And if the aforementioned varieties didn’t appeal, there are sweet ones too, including vanilla, raspberry, strawberry and chocolate.
“Most people don’t expect to like a raspberry butter or to like chocolate butter,” said owner Erwan Leo. “And when they try it, this is where they’re just like, ‘Oh wow, OK.’”
Leo, who also runs a wine-tasting business, said butter should be used like wine, to make a meal better. “The goal isn’t to get drunk,” he cautions, adding that tasting butter works like tasting wine.
“You have to grab your spoon, you put it on your palate, on your tongue, it has to melt a little bit, and then the flavours are going to start coming one by one.”
Leo adds that the secret to savoring fatty butter is to be like Parisians: Walk a lot, and practice moderation.
“We don’t go beyond four tartines a day,” he said.
“The Italians choose olive oil, we choose butter. We learn how to master it.”
Leo’s producers churn from selected cows and higher-fat milk; an extra 2 or 3 percentage points, he said, “really makes a huge difference.”
The tiny shop has drawn crowds through social media and now has a staff of four.
“From day one, it’s been crazy,” Leo said. “Most people come in with wanting to try one or two butters, they end up trying 25 butters because they’re just so curious.”
Next up: a croissant-flavored butter, and perhaps violet.
“This is limitless,” Leo said.
If you’re not thinking “butter me up”, we don’t know how to help you.
Le Butter Shop is located at 5 Rue Bouchut in Paris, a stone’s throw away from the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower.