Buttering Up Local Restaurants

My recent pontifications on butter have led me to wonder whether it's time for a change in butter service at LA's finest restaurants. Usually, along with some very fine bread, you get a plate of unidentified butter plopped down unceremoniously. There is little commentary around it, and, in my experience, you almost always have to ask to find out what type of butter you're eating. (And more often than not it is something acceptable but unexciting, like the European style Plugra that is available almost everywhere now).

Given that there is a new crop of fine artisanal butters available as well as plenty of wonderful European butters which now appear regularly in gourmet stores (butter apparently freezes well for transportation), it's high time that fine restaurants put more of an emphasis on butter.

Why not offer a choice of butters as an alternative to the standard? In fact, in a town that has seen water bars and oxygen bars, why not a butter bar...selling great bread with an option of different butters?

Now, I know that in a city in which the cheese spread is so often lacking, even in the finest establishments, butter appreciation may be asking too much, but this is something that people eat everyday, and damn it, it should be good.

So come on all you fancy-dancy restaurants, you Patinas and Providences, Spagos and Bastides, butter us up.