Bread, the most humble and underrated of restaurant rituals
A situation we are all familiar with – you arrive at a restaurant, curious about the experience you’re about to have, probably hungry and eager to discover the menu items that will make your mouth water.
As soon as the order is placed, a ballet of glassware, plates and wine tasting begins. Now, before even the first amuse bouche arrives, bread enters the scene.
The higher the level of the restaurant, the more attention is paid to details. And bread most often says a lot about the quality of the chosen venue.
As do mignardises, service rituals or the amuse-bouche, bread can enhance the dining experience in a beautiful and unexpected manner.
Bread is found in every culture, most often considered a staple, used as a plate saucer, a cheese garnish or to quickly alleviate our hunger pangs at lunch or dinner time.
A great bread ritual, though, is also the simplest expression of a chef’s creativity. Whether it is freshly baked, with or without sourdough, and served with a homemade seaweed butter, like at JAAN in Singapore, or custom made by the neighboring baker – bread is the ideal way to start telling the story of what is to come. Usually, it is accompanied by butter or a very high-quality olive oil to dip in. At Ursus, in Savoie, France, for example, the fresh butters of the Bourg Saint Maurice cooperative are presented and scooped on demand.
At Hide, in London’s Mayfair district, bread is the star and everything else but boring. The baguette is made with malt and pine nuts, sourdough is spiced with smoked paprika, the generous brioche is served with Lardo di Colonata and Focaccia is made with Kalamata olives and fresh rosemary. For Chef Mauro Caulagreco, this ritual is a reminder that bread is at the heart of sharing and he shapes his loaves into beautiful flowers, each petal begging to be dipped in the most flavorful olive oil.
This is a true confirmation that the smallest details are the ones that make the greatest restaurants. So, let’s reshape the ideas we have about bread and give it a good proof.
Stéphane Bellon, managing director, Studionomie, Geneva, Switzerland
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