The term "bread and butter" is an idiom for everyday or basic fare, and diners gobble up that hunk of partially-sliced sourdough bread served with pats of foil-wrapped butter served by many classic San Francisco restaurants without giving it much thought.
At some places, though, the bread and butter is anything but basic; it’s so incredibly good, it demands your attention.
Pardon the pun, but artisanal bread has been on the rise in San Francisco since the Gold Rush, when miners and prospectors needed a way to bake bread without yeast. Our obsession with butter is more recent. According to Lisa Pike Totah, marketing director for California's leading butter producer, Challenge Dairy, per-capita butter consumption reached an all-time record high of 6.8 pounds per person in the U.S. in 2024.
"Over the past few years, butter has moved from supporting player to a hero,” she says. ”Once considered little more than a companion to toast, it now commands as much attention as the bread itself. Today's consumers are curious about flavor and often keep several different butters in their refrigerators. Chefs and restaurateurs have taken notice, offering guests a dedicated butter moment that elevates the dining experience."
A dedicated butter moment, indeed! We've had some bread and butter recently that practically made us swoon. Here are the ones that—like the best bread—made the cut.
Outerlands
(Courtesy of Outerlands)
Outerlands opened in 2009, and bread and butter has been central to the restaurant since day one. The original owners worked with Chad Robertson of Tartine to build out the bread program. According to executive chef Brenda Landa, the restaurant currently has a team member dedicated solely to creating boules and other bread items on the menu. They go through around 30 loaves a day.
"The starter for the sourdough here is at least as old as the restaurant itself,” says Landa. “Like many other fermented foods, the sourdough starter changes its flavor profile as it matures. Even though we're using the same starter as when we opened, that flavor has transformed, and so has the flavor of the boules."
But as good as the bread is, the butter is also a showstopper. "The butter begins with cultured creme fraiche we make in-house,” Landa continues. “We let the creme fraiche ferment for two days until it thickens before whipping it into butter. This three-day process results in a tangy butter with much more depth of flavor than your average store-bought butter."
"I can confidently say that every table dining with us orders the bread and butter," she adds. An order of pain au levain served with house-cultured butter is $10.
Insider tip: Whole loaves are also available for sale.
// 4001 Judah St. (Outer Sunset), outerlandssf.com
Rich Table
(Courtesy of Rich Table)
Rich Table opened in 2012 and, like Outerlands, the bread and butter has been on the menu since the very beginning. Chef and co-owner Sarah Rich developed the restaurant’s starter with her father in the months leading up to its opening. The recipe includes Douglas fir powder and local grains, including flour milled by Josey Baker of The Mill and bread flour from Cairnspring Mills. Chef and co-owner Evan Rich took an intensive bread class at the SF Baking Institute recently and really dialed in the formula to make the bread better than ever. We don't disagree that it's truly the best it’s ever been.
As far as the butter goes, it is also made in-house. They save all of the raclette cheese rinds from the cheese used for their porcini doughnut sauce and add it to the cream along with yogurt, giving the butter a deep, complex flavor. It’s whipped and pressed after being cultured for days to deepen the flavor. The sourdough bread with house-cultured butter is $7.
// 199 Gough St. (Hayes Valley), richtablesf.com
Lazy Bear
(Courtesy of Lazy Bear)
The bread-and-butter course comes midway through Lazy Bear's tasting menu. "We are really chasing after the perfect dinner rolls of our youth,” says executive chef and founder David Barzelay. “The bread is based on a Japanese milk bread technique, with a cooked flour paste incorporated into the dough that keeps the rolls so pillowy and luscious. It would otherwise be white bread, but we incorporate a bunch of brown butter solids—the little brown bits in brown butter—for character. The brown butter's nuttiness plays well off the butter's lactic tang.”
“We consider the bread to be in service of the butter,” Barzelay adds. “We’ve found that warm, pillowy, soft breads tend to showcase it the best."
And the butter? It’s made with a unique culture that Lazy Bear’s been developing for seven years. "Keeping that culture of microorganisms going, perpetuating it by taking the buttermilk that’s left after churning each batch, and using the buttermilk to inoculate the fresh cream of the next batch [makes it] like a sourdough starter, just with a different set of microorganisms," explains Barzelay.
"But after fourteen years, the culture itself has evolved. It’s gotten really cheesy in flavor, and super complex. It has a lot of lactic tang because we culture it pretty far. We give the guests a fair bit of the butter. And we intend that they finish all of the butter. Either with the bread, or, if they run out of bread first, we encourage them to just dig into the butter on its own. We always offer more bread. Or more butter." Altogether, the restaurant runs through a whopping 25 pounds of their cultured butter each week.
Insider tip: Guests who want to try their hand at making cultured butter are offered a bit of their buttermilk and instructions for inoculating it with fresh cream, churning it, and hand pressing it.
// 3416 19th St. (Mission), lazybearsf.com
7 Adams
(Courtesy of 7 Adams)
7 Adams has been serving their bread and butter since they opened in 2023. It’s something chef-partners David Fisher and Serena Chow Fisher both love.
According to them, the whole premise of the bread is that it is meant to be spongy enough to soak up anything that’s left behind on your plate—sauce, vinaigrette, butter—and deliver the last morsels of flavor to your belly. Nothing is left behind.
As proud as they are of their bread, the butter also deserves equal billing. It's been culturing for five years and is the perfect foil to the pillowy bread. Every table gets a complimentary serving of the delicate milk bread and butter, and the chefs share that, perhaps not surprisingly, 95 percent of tables get seconds.
// 1963 Sutter Street (Fillmore), 7adamsrestaurant.com
Via Aurelia
(Courtesy of Via Aurelia)
When Via Aurelia opened in 2025, restaurant reviewers gushed that the bread program was "one of the finest in the city." "A friend of ours grows the olives and presses them into our olive oil exclusively used by us, and our own 'butter,' which is actually known as Tuscan butter, is whipped lardo," says chef and owner David Nayfield.
The bread is a partnership between Via Aurelia and Amanda Michael at Jane Bakery, which grows the grain and mills it into flour for the restaurant. Via Aurelia goes through roughly 20 loaves a day.
// 300 Toni Stone Crossing St. (Mission Bay), viaaureliasf.com
Boulevard
(Courtesy of Boulevard)
Boulevard has one of the longest-running bread and butter programs in the city, dating back to 1993. The restaurant has worked with Acme Bakery, an early pioneer in artisan breads at scale in the Bay Area, for almost 30 years. They currently offer three styles: olive, classic levain, and seeded whole wheat. Part of the dining room menu, the restaurant reports easily going through 30-50 loaves a night.
Rather than make their own butter, Boulevard offers a French butter, La Conviette, from Charentes-Poitou A.O.P., established in 1896. It arrives unsalted (doux), and they add Maldon flake salt on top for flavor and crunch.
"It is a small-format, cultured butter with distinct nutty notes,” says executive chef and partner Dana Younkin. ”While slowly lacto-fermented, it is not overly intense but subtly sweet and delicate." They also make their own focaccia (currently rosemary-and-dried-apricot flavored), which comes with their cheese service, and a sourdough English muffin toast for their crab melt.
Insider tip: The whole levain is available for purchase to those in the know.
// 1 Mission St. (SoMa), boulevardrestaurant.com
O By Claude le Tohic
(Courtesy of O By Claude Le Tohic)
At O By Claude Le Tohic at One65, bread and butter service is truly a “wow” moment. The restaurant has been serving a dazzling array of breads since 2019. The current lineup, baked in-house every afternoon to ensure it is fresh and warm, includes brioche feuilletée shiitake, pain feuilletée traditionnel, classique brioche, mini baguette tradition, buckwheat cannelé (gluten-free), pain Viennois, and mini croissants.
Executive Chef Claude Le Tohic explains, "I curated a large selection of bread to give guests a variety of options: crispy, soft, sweet, savory, and gluten-free. Guests may have as much bread as they like. However, our team helps guide their order to balance qualities and pace, ensuring they can enjoy the entire meal without filling up too early."
Like at Boulevard, O offers exquisite French butter. "We serve Bordier butter from Saint-Malo, France,” says Le Tohic. “It is highly renowned, exclusive, and traditional—churned using wooden paddles and finished with sea salt."
Insider tip: Bordier butter is available for purchase in the patisserie boutique on the ground floor of One65.
// 165 O’Farrell St. (Union Square), one65sf.com
Restaurant Naides
(Alexa LexMex Treviño)
Restaurant Naides, which opened in 2025, is the newest star on the bread-and-butter scene, with pandesal served with three toppings. "Pandesal is an everyday staple in the Philippines, commonly eaten during breakfast or as a snack,” says chef Patrick Gabon. “Here at Restaurant Naides, we make it more like a brioche style so it can hold the condiments we serve—chicken sisig, chicken liver spread, and atchara—while keeping the signature breadcrumbs (which we make from our leftover bread). Instead of just accompanying the meal, we treat it as a dish in its own right."
The course is both familiar and exciting and allows guests to pair and craft the perfect bite. While sisig is traditionally made with pork head, at Restaurant Naides they use batikolon (chicken gizzard) cooked very long and hard to make it meaty, topped off with crispy chicken feet for texture and seasonal herbs for freshness. The most traditional spread is the chicken liver, which Gabon says is a classic found in most Filipino households. Adding the tang and cutting through the richness of the other two condiments is atchara, a type of Filipino pickle made with unripe papaya and sweet peppers.
Altogether, it is nothing short of transcendent. "Pandesal is very familiar, humble, and deeply connected to everyday Filipino life,” says Gabon. “Butter would make the bread delicious, but these condiments make it tell a story,”—one that lingers long after the meal has ended.
// 708 Bush St. (Union Square), restaurantnaides.com
