“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.
