It’s an old family habit I learned at my Mother’s knee. Whenever we went out for breakfast, she would always, always ask for buttered toast. It was the criterion on which a restaurant was judged.
One time years ago we went to Mammy’s Pancake House on Rush Street in Chicago. When our order arrived at the table, Mother noticed right away that the toast had not been buttered. She sent it back and started to eat the rest of her breakfast. Eventually the toast reappeared with a pat of butter on each slice. But this didn’t meet Mother’s requirement. She wanted the butter spread edge to edge. In fact, she would have preferred it dipped in melted butter. The toast went back and forth between our table and the kitchen a couple more times, but its appearance didn’t really improve. We left Mammy’s with the toast untouched, and we never went back.
After that, when we went out for breakfast, Mother asked the following question before making her menu selection. “Do you butter the toast in the kitchen?” If the answer was “No,” at least she could modify her order.
It’s a small thing, but I too like toast that’s buttered in the kitchen. To get the proper melting quality, the butter (or margarine or whatever spread) has to be applied as soon as the toast comes out of the toaster. The best way to do that is for someone near the toaster to be in charge.
This morning, Earl, our friend Peg, and I ate breakfast at Wishbone and I ordered — you guessed it — an English muffin buttered in the kitchen. “We don’t butter,” the server said. “There’s butter on the table.” I looked around but couldn’t find it. “It’s those little white containers,” she added. Ah, yes, the ones that look like they hold cream. At least I wasn’t going to contend with those frozen butter pats wrapped in gold foil. I grabbed a tiny butter tub and squeezed it; yes, the butter was soft. But when our food arrived, the English muffin had cooled considerably and even the soft butter had difficulty melting into its pores. I ate it anyway.
This is the Starbucks® society, where every single cup of coffee is made to order, and people have unlimited choices. It’s also the Burger King® society where we’re encouraged to “Have it your way.” Maybe we’ve gone to extremes, and there’s a group out there that is taking a stand on all this individualization. Its motto is “We don’t butter.”
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