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Posted by on Jan 13, 2016 in Blog, Rants and Raves, Restaurant Reviews | 5 comments

Since When Did Restaurants Start Rationing Butter?

 

nolan-dalla-las-vegas

 

I’m a butter fanatic.  Call it a fetish.  I know.  I’m freaky.

When I die, in lieu of cremation followed by scattering my ashes off a cliff somewhere — instead, baste me in melted butter.  Then, deep fry me like a beignet until golden crisp and deep brown.  Next, sprinkle me with gobs of powdered sugar.  Finally, toss me off a cliff.  That way a hungry seagull can clutch, swallow, and ultimately shit the last final vestiges of my earthy existence.  At least my life will have had some meaning.

The great chef and culinary icon Julia Child also had a thing for butter.  It was an obsession, really.  She didn’t take any short-cuts inside her kitchen, which became an extension of our own homes.  Child’s recipes made their way into our dining rooms and transformed how we looked upon food, not simply as a bodily requirement but as an experience.  Accordingly, she didn’t resort to cooking with cheap imitations, nor resort to the use of artificial ingredients.  Convenience, my ass.  Fuck that.  Julia Child never used “low-calorie” this, nor “lite” that.  Ever.  And so according to that most hallowed of gospels, there was nor is no replacement for butter.  Authenticity has no substitute.  As they say, you can’t fake sincerity.

Tragically, some impostors have invaded many of our kitchens and infested our collective consciousness.  Now, forgeries are floating around such as “margarine,” which is scientifically proven to be far worse in terms of ruinous to one’s health.  If you consume margarine, then why not just slam it down with a dozen Red Bulls and smoke three packs of cigarettes in between meth trips on the way to another tour in Afghanistan.  Same fucking thing.  Margarine in nutritional meth, while juggling hand-grenades.

The very worst of these imitators is a shit-brown plastic tub of poison labeled as “Country Crock.”  This industrial garbage has just about the same chemical composition as plastic.  You don’t believe me?  Go ahead — ask a scientist, if you can find one who isn’t sucking the bod rod of an oil company, or blowing Big Pharma.  Toxic polymers packed in a plastic tub that doesn’t even require refrigeration (red flag!) are hardly the factory-made sludge you should want tarring up your veins on the path towards a premature heart attack.  Any parent who serves Country Crock to their children should be charged with child abuse, then placed up against a wall blindfolded, and shot.  Do some research on this, people.  That shit is artificially-flavored venom.  It should be outlawed.

Notice and Warning:  If I ever attend a private dinner party and the product known as “Country Crock” is served at the table, I will quietly excuse myself without any explanation whatsoever.  If you use this in your daily cooking, how am I to possibly trust what other poor choices you have likely made in preparation of my meal?  Please, do not force me to embarrass you.  This is not a joke, nor an exaggeration.

While there’s plenty of polymers poisoning on our tables, apparently, butter is becoming increasingly viewed not as standard table politesse, but as a delicacy.  Consider that most B-list restaurants now no longer serve real butter as an accompaniment to one’s dining experience.  Either of two things happens.  1.  No butter gets served at all.  Or, 2.  Jalopy jack-off joints like Applebee’s, Chili’s, Friday’s, etc. try to pretend you’re getting real butter by providing ramekins filled with some gooey yellow-colored substance that looks like butter but is nothing more than chemically-altered gunk.

WAKE UP, PEOPLE!  THEY THINK WE ARE FOOLS!

Last night, we went out to dinner at Bonefish Grill in Summerlin.  It’s a step up from Red Lobster.  Well, more like two or three steps up, if you’ve had what masquerades as Red Lobster’s “trout” lately.  The last time I was inside a Red Lobster and consumed what was advertised as a former creature of some aquatic body of water, I was tempted to contact the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a whistleblower.  For someone who resides in land-locked Las Vegas, Bonefish is about as decent a seafood restaurant as you’ll find in the local neighborhood, short of spending the whole night walking through a maze of parking levels trying to find a suitable seafood place inside the Aria, then getting taken to the cleaners for three-bucks-twenty-five, minus the bullshit commute through Strip traffic, all in the midst of being looked upon with disgust by a 24-year-old college dropout who’s pissed you got seated in his section instead of the rich Japanese tourists who are ordering bottles of Chateau-something-or-other like it’s fucking Evian.

This now brings me to my story.  The waiter comes out.  He serves our drinks.  Then, he takes our order.  Life is good.  All is right with the world.  A few minutes later, the warm bread is served, popping hot right out of the oven.  Uh, oh.  Too bad I wasn’t dining in Houston last night because we had a problem:

THERE WAS ONLY ONE TINY SLAB OF BUTTER. 

[Evidence:  See photo above…because I don’t make shit up like some fiction writer]

After summoning the waiter over to our table, the conversation proceeded as follows:

NOLAN (OBVIOUSLY, THE HERO OF THE STORY):  Can we get some more butter, please?

WAITER:  I can’t do that.

NOLAN:  What?  Why not?

WAITER:  We are only supposed to bring out one butter.

NOLAN:  Huh?  You’re telling me I only get one butter for that whole loaf of bread?  Usually, I take that slab and put it ON EVERY BITE.  I’m estimate I’m going to need about 8 or 10 more slabs of butter.  But why don’t you make it a dozen so I don’t have to badger you every two minutes for more?

WAITER:  That butter is supposed to be for two people.  One slab for two people.

NOLAN:  Seriously?  You’ve got to fucking be kidding me.  What do you mean — like two sparrows?  How are two people supposed to make it on that?

WAITER:  (laughing) I’m really sorry.  But that’s what management tells us to to.  One section of butter for every two people.

NOLAN:  Well, I don’t want to be rude but — I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER.  RIGHT NOW!

At this point, our quiet dinner has deteriorated into a mental tug-of-willpower between Winston Smith and Big Brother.  I’m not fucking believing what has just occurred.  We’re dining at what’s supposedly is an upscale seafood restaurant in a nicer part of town, and here I am begging for a slab of butter like a starving refugee who’s trying to plead his case to Donald Trump.

Seriously, have we reached the point of dwindling profit margins to the point where butter now gets rationed?  I mean, is this Las Vegas in 2016 or Enver Hoxha’s Albania in 1961?  (a little humor for my Eastern European readers)

A few more minutes pass.  Finally, the waiter returns to our tableside:

WAITER:  I talked to my manager.

NOLAN:  Great.

WAITER:  We can provide more butter, but only upon request.

NOLAN:  Hooray!  I feel like I’ve hit the lottery!   

WAITER:  Here you go (produces a large white plate with another tiny slab of butter, which is about the size of a postage stamp).  I wish I could bring out more.  But if I do, I’ll get into trouble.

NOLAN:  [DEER MEETS HEADLIGHTS….SPEECHLESS]

WAITER:  I’ll try and bring out some more later.

NOLAN:  This is the most ridiculous policy I’ve ever heard making people fight over butter.

WAITER:  Sorry, I wish I could bring out some more, but I can’t — at least until that’s all gone.

NOLAN:  What about this.  I will sit here right now wolf down a whole slab of butter with each bite.  Then, when you see it’s completely gone — you run back into the kitchen and bring me another.  Thing is, you might have to do that a dozen times.  So, instead — let’s not fool ourselves.  Why not just bring me 8 slabs of butter and you don’t end up wearing out a new set of Skechers.

WAITER:  (smiling) What about her (looking to Marieta)?  Doesn’t she get some of the butter?

NOLAN:  No.  She’s completely on her own.  It’s every man for himself.  Time to hide the women and children.  This is war.

WAITER:  (laughter….walks away….doesn’t bring me any more butter over the next 30 minutes)

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.

My final act of civil disobedience occurred when this picture was snapped (below), which shows two tiny slabs of butter.  I feel like a broken man.  Although violated by a factor of 100 percent, official company policy middle-fingered, two slabs of butter now have to last for an entire loaf of bread between two famished people of means.  I’ve now been reduced to rationing real butter while living in the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world, living in a city known for gluttony and excess.  This is sooooooooooooo fucked.

It’s almost enough to make you beg for a tub of Country Crock.

 

IMAG0647 (2) - Edited

 

5 Comments

  1. “Toxic polymers packed in a plastic tub that doesn’t even fucking require refrigeration (red flag! red flag!)…”

    Uh, Nolan, salted butter can last a long time without refrigeration (red flag! red flag!). My grandmother never used to refrigerate it. I do, because I don’t use it up as quickly as she did and because, well, why not? Some sources recommend not storing it unrefrigerated for longer than a couple of weeks, but if one is able to minimize its contact with air, it can be safely stored at modest room temperatures for considerably longer than that without going bad. Historically, it’s longevity was one of its most valuable properties, and some early European cultures in cooler climates would make and store some forms of butter that would be stored for months or years.

    It would seem to me that understanding this sort of thing should be a prerequisite for someone to lecture someone else on the topic of food safety, but what do I know?

  2. New meaning to BYOB

  3. Unless you butter on Skittles, you’re an amateur!

  4. Im with you and Julia!!!

  5. Thansk again Nolan, another crappy place not to go in Vegas.
    Very soon you’ll have to bring your own condiments and napkins in the purse.

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