The effect was that you could get a little of each at the same time. Swiping a knife through the butter necessitated running it through a little olive oil, and though the arrangement would have allowed you to dip some bread into the olive oil alone, if you were careful, why would you be, when the butter was so tantalizingly close and soft? Against the olive oil’s bitterness, the butter — the good Rodolphe Le Meunier stuff — seemed sweeter and grassier. Where the softened butter felt thick and dense, I found myself appreciating the looseness of the olive oil by comparison.
I’d never considered that you could do this, and the absolute indulgence of it (on a weekday, no less!) felt casually revelatory, not unlike how I imagine the inventors of the KFC Double Down must have felt. It felt like permission to be extra — to go all the way, and not just part of the way, in terms of enjoying myself.
Inspired by Raf’s, this is the move. It’s a simple one: Serve your bread with butter and olive oil, ideally the nicest you have of each. Make sure the butter is soft and make sure they’re in the same container. It doesn’t have to be like this all the time, but it’s an easy way to make a pairing that you might take for granted feel special and quietly luxurious. Sometimes you need those kinds of reminders on a random Wednesday. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter
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