The Restaurant That Makes Bread And Butter The Main Event

You're out to eat with your family. It could be any restaurant you want, just so long as it's not a fast food place. As you sit in your booth talking, the server comes by and drops off a basket filled with sliced bread or dinner rolls and those little plastic tubs of butter. No one makes a big deal about it, with the reactions at most being a few of the group stop talking to get themselves some bread and butter. 

Many restaurants, including Outback Steakhouse and Olive Garden serve bread as a sign of hospitality, a way to give customers something to hold them over and chew on while they wait for their meals to come. Most customers are grateful for the free bread and don't really expect anything particularly fancy. However, for one restaurant in Manhattan, bread and butter isn't just served in a basket or wooden tray — it's treated as a special tableside service.

At Quality Bistro, bread and butter isn't comprised of your basic crusty dinner rolls and plastic bowls full of butter. Instead, it's part of something called Butter Service Garni, a cross between a charcuterie board and a dessert cart, piled with everything from meats, nuts, and vegetables, to of course, a gigantic crock full of butter. What does this "butter service" entail and why would Quality Bistro do something so extravagant for something as simple as free bread and butter?

At most restaurants, you don't expect to be charged for the bread. It's a complimentary service, free of charge. If you look at Quality Bistro's menu, however, that's not the case. Under the "Pour La Table" section, the Butter Service Garni is priced at a rather high $28 dollars. 

While this is admittedly a lot for something you usually get for free at most other restaurants, Food & Wine explains that this particular iteration goes above and beyond and the bread and butter comes with a wide variety of impressive options. A cart is wheeled to your table and the waiter serves you a marble platter of butter, scooped fresh at your table from a gigantic, overflowing crock. To complement the rich and flavorful butter, accompaniments of Filone bread, radishes, leeks, jambon cuit, chorizo, honey, almonds, smoked paprika, and cornichons surround the butter. Food & Wine also notes that the butter service could be a meal in itself, rather than something that is served merely to hold you over until dinner. It's not so much a complimentary snack but more like a full-course event meant to showcase an elevated form of bread and butter.

But why did the restaurant want to charge $28 for a tray of bread, fancy butter, and snacks? Where did Quality Bistro get such an idea in the first place?

Michael Stillman, the owner of the Quality brand, explains to Food & Wine that the rather flamboyant show of serving up bread and butter in his restaurant takes inspiration from cheese services traditionally observed in restaurants across Paris. While Quality Bistro's adaptation of this service does differ from cheese service in key aspects, such as focusing more on rich butter than cheeses, both services follow the same general idea — providing an expansive spread of flavors and textures to their customers.

In fact, the whole idea behind Quality Bistro was directly inspired by French traditions. The restaurant opened in 2020 and is modeled after the French architectural styles of the Belle Époque era. Other restaurants in the Quality line-up have also been inspired by European cuisines, including Quality Italian, which uses Italian-American inspiration in its traditional foods like filet mignon, house-made gnocchi, lobster rigatoni, and surprisingly enough, a tableside truffle butter service, which can be added to any of their steak options.

While paying almost $30 for bread and butter may not sound like a fair deal when you don't know the details, Quality Bistro certainly seems to give customers enough food to make it worthwhile. You can even take the leftovers home with you if you're feeling particularly stuffed.