Creatively speaking “The Bear” doesn’t contain much fat. People rank episodes from best to least as a matter of internet compulsion. Still, its overall consistency leads us to devour seasons in one sitting before rewatching carefully, like mindful eaters.
The truly devoted look for the industry nods and shopping suggestions, although if you love food as I do, you may keep your eyes peeled for glimpses of special ingredients and preparation techniques. The third season has it all, meeting Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Syd (Ayo Edebiri) and the rest of The Original Beef crew as they’re launching their ambitious bistro in Chicago's River North neighborhood.
With the menu’s elevation to haute cuisine comes an eyeful of extraordinary elements – beef slices with gorgeously rosy centers, blood orange reductions and gleaming pearls of roe.
But the ingredient that really caught my attention doesn't appear on film, only on paper. “I have a bill in my hand for $11,268 for butter!” barks Oliver Platt’s Uncle Jimmy, Carmy’s rich relative and his restaurant's financial backer. The camera briefly cuts to said bill listing “Orwellian Unsalted Butter” and “Orwellian Salted Butter.”
“Buddy, what is it? A rare Transylvanian five-titted goat? We cannot . . . keep this up!”
Carmy simply answers, “It’s Orwellian,” as if that explains everything, but it doesn’t. “Dystopian butter?” Uncle Jimmy tersely asks. “What are you talking about?”
To those in the know, namedropping Orwell, Vermont is a subtle reference to Animal Farm Creamery, the small dairy renowned for making cultured butter so luxuriant, and so scrumptious, that it supplies a handful of the most upscale restaurants in the United States.
Some of these establishments cameo in “The Bear” either by mention or feature, along with their proprietors. Per Se and French Laundry owner Thomas Keller, who appears in the third season finale, is the reason Animal Farm became the brand of choice for top restaurants to have and serve. His relationship with Animal Farm dates back some 25 years when Diane St. Clair began experimenting with making the type of cultured butter that is common in Europe.
In one of the creamery's earliest New York Times profiles, St. Clair described in 2005 overnighting a sample of her carefully handmade butter to Keller to ask his opinion on her product.
"He wanted all the butter I could send him," she said. Her list of five-star dining establishment clients expanded since then, not by much.
St. Clair ran her micro-dairy and cared for her small herd of Jersey cows until 2022 when, as the Times reported, she passed ownership of Animal Farm to Ben and Hilary Haigh of Rolling Bale Farm in Shoreham, Vermont. The Haighs have maintained St. Clair’s production methods to a degree that when the Times reached out to one of the accounts the dairy still supplies, Saxelby Cheesemongers, the report was that the quality remains the same. Their Jersey cows remain well-loved and grass-fed, which informs the butter’s sunny color.
Here’s the process as described in a post on Saxelby’s site:
First, Hilary skims the rich Jersey cream by hand, keeping its precious fat globules in pristine condition. She cultures the cream for 24 hours, using buttermilk as a starter. The final steps, churning and kneading, are also done by hand, until Hilary arrives at a product that she deems fit for the table.
This loving artisanal treatment doesn’t come cheap. One pound of sweet cream butter, divided into a quartet of 4-ounce balls, costs $60.
I wasn’t aware of any of this before typing "Orwellian butter" into my search engine and reading all about this mysterious treat everyone’s favorite fantasy chef insists is worth a five-figure grocery bill.
But I do love butter. That much I know.
I’ve snuck frozen bricks of Le Beurre Bordier back from Paris, seduced by a singular taste and silken mouthfeel that its American counterparts lack entirely. Out of all the customs risks I could have taken, this one sounded especially silly to a few of my friends. Until they tried some.
If Bordier were the best, Carmy would have said so. Instead, he mentioned “Orwellian butter,” so I had to know what made it that much more sensational.
One reason may be its exclusivity. At present Saxelby’s is the only online source that ships Animal Farm butter nationwide and offers it in limited quantities. Since I had the good fortune of having seen the latest season of “The Bear” before it dropped, I hit up the Saxelby’s site to see if any of the butter was in stock. Miraculously it was.
Then I had to weigh how badly I wanted the stuff.
That $60 price tag didn’t factor in the cost of overnight shipping, bringing the price for a pound to the equivalent to a week's worth of groceries from Trader Joe's.
I live in the Pacific Northwest, a culinarily enviable part of the world where ingredients that would be considered rare are locally available and more affordable than they might be in one of the cities within the Michelin Guide’s purview (New York, Washington DC, California, Illinois and Florida).
There are excellent dairies in my area. Even if there weren't, Kerrygold’s unsalted butter is cultured and, while still expensive next to Land O’ Lakes, is quite delicious and available at my local grocery store.
My gut offered the counterpoint that I love “The Bear” and other shows and movies that whet my imagination’s palate for the way they depict a creatively inspiring and aspirational world.
It’s also unlikely I’ll ever eat at one of Keller’s restaurants or The Inn at Little Washington, another Animal Farm patron whose painstakingly designed course dinner hovers at around $400 per person before beverage or wine pairings.
But, I reasoned, I could afford to splurge on their butter of choice, assuring myself that I’d regret it if I didn’t while this rare offer was available. After "The Bear" premiered and like-minded eaters rushed to get a taste, Animal Farm would be much harder to obtain.
Added to cart.
A few days later I opened a chilled box containing the dairy equivalent of gold: four rough-hewn balls intentionally left unsalted to allow the butter’s natural flavor to remain the first bite's star, nestled inside a Ziploc bag.
My husband arranged a breakfast with our friends next door, one of whom makes the best sourdough loaf I’ve eaten. Sadly he discovered that the mother dough (starter) was dying, so we settled for the next best option – a pillow of crusty goodness from Macrina, a wonderful local bakery.
We whipped up some eggs and sausage almost as an excuse before sitting down to sample the butter, piling a small mound of briny black salt on the side. Then we dug in to find out what the fuss was all about.
Reader, when I tell you that virgin taste made each of us pause, I mean precisely that. We all stopped. Eventually one of our guests found the words to describe the experience, saying that it made regular butter taste like . . . like . . . nothing. And it’s true.
Animal Farm's cultured delicacy is slightly sweet and dandelion bright, with a rounded richness explained by its 87 percent butterfat content. Adding salt accentuates its faint savory notes, marrying it even more closely with the bread’s flavors.
Heavenly is one way to describe it, but at the risk of flirting with sacrilege, while the taste didn’t make me conjure the image of a rare Transylvanian goat with five teats, it did send me back to a scene in the 2015 thriller “The Witch.” You may know the reference: Remember when the demon goat Black Phillip tempts Anya Taylor-Joy’s worn-down Puritan Thomasin with, “Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? . . . Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”
If Black Phillip had skipped straight to the butter offer with this, the murder and madness that preceded it could have been avoided. That butter had a stiff price tag too, since the girl traded her immortal soul. Suddenly $60 plus an ungodly shipping fee didn’t seem so steep.
Some may still balk at dropping that much coin on a meltable item you might spread on toast, especially since other “Bear”-related “chef-core” accessories earn their upfront cost by lasting longer than a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. (Although you can and should freeze any butter you can’t consume within that time.)
For instance, the Birkenstock Tokio Super Grips popularized by the series might set you back $155 or so, but you’ll get a few seasons of use out of them. The same goes for Carmy’s expensive but enviably snug-fitted t-shirts or Syd’s scarves. None of these are “moment on the lips, lifetime on the hips” indulgences.
If the aim is to live deliciously, one must understand that not all butters are equal, which we can only really know by sampling them. Uncle Jimmy might not be convinced, but we’re with Carmy. With the right salt, bread and company, the Orwellian butter is worth the ridiculous price. As long as you're not bankrolling a restaurant.
All episodes of "The Bear" are streaming on Hulu.
