I’m an artist who paints food, so I tend to notice food in a slightly obsessive way. Not just how it tastes, but the way in which it turns up on the table. Its form, its shape, its shade. How much thought someone’s put into it (or not!), and what that means. I love all of that.

Butter’s been having a big cultural moment for a while now, but it doesn’t feel like a flash-in-the-pan thing. Its popularity has persisted beyond a mere trend, and continues to emerge in endless creative ways. Butter is forever.

Butter used to be a straightforward thing, it arrived in a smooth yellow block, wrapped in foil, and that was the end of the story. Now it shows up sculpted, moulded, flavoured, and all dressed up on a silver platter. Someone has clearly spent time with it before it gets anywhere near the bread.

I don’t really know when that happened, but it did. I was initially a bit confused by it, but mostly I’m very happy about it! Maybe amused is more the right word.

I’ve dabbled with butter creatively myself, just not in the sculptural way that we see on Pinterest-worthy tablescapes. I painted bread and butter as a still life and it found a buyer almost straight away. It’s such a simple thing, but clearly people are deeply connected with it …And perhaps it is because of its simplicity itself that makes it so compelling and universal.

At Food For Everyone, we also once designed a bright yellow cap that was simply embroidered with the words, ‘I Love Butter’ . To this day, people still email me to ask if we’ll bring it back. I love that people want to wear that statement on their head. It feels important to be clear about where you stand on butter.

One of my favourite butter-related pieces we’ve commissioned is a portrait of butter, Les Pres Salés, by Simon Paredes from Arts Project Australia. Simon has a distinct, graphic style focussing on domestic iconic but injecting them with more verve and personality that the subject started with. Watching a fancy butter become a character through his eyes was pretty special.

Butter makes sense as something artists and creatives are drawn to. It’s charming. And if you buy the good French stuff, well… it’s hard to beat. The packaging. The colour. I keep wanting to paint it.

I’ve also started seeing butter sculptures at events. Actual centrepieces. Kilograms of butter whipped into mountainous forms, adorned with ribbons. Rather than being a passive subject, butter has become the medium itself. I have to admit though, it has made me chuckle a bit as it makes me think of that 90s ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ ad with Fabio.

A little more tasteful, (in my eyes) is Laila Gohar, who’s been working with food as art for years. In her world, butter is always part of the scene. It sits on the table, people talk about it, and then it gets eaten. She even makes butter sculptures that are very intentionally made to be destroyed. I love that.

Butter has also popped up as a colour. Soft yellow kitchens. Dresses. Walls. It’s been everywhere for a while, but it never feels overdone or too shouty. It feels both classic and modern. It’s a colour that’s easy to live with. 

What really makes me smile is how seriously butter is being taken. And honestly, she deserves it. 

But I find myself wondering what’s next. I’ve started to notice radicchio out and about, its sculptural form, that deep purple shade, its curling leaves. It’s certainly tall, dark, and handsome. But it's no buttery Fabio. 

For now though, I’m happy butter is still having its moment. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. It feels like something artists will always keep coming back to, whether it’s fashionable or not.

From the hillsides of Abruzzo to a kitchen in the Yarra Valley, on migration, memory, and why the simplest things are often the ones that last.

Most people couldn't point to Abruzzo on a map, and the Abruzzese would tell you that's fine by them. Wedged between the Apennines and the Adriatic, it's rugged and untouched, a region of shepherds and hilltop villages, of food shaped by landscape and necessity rather than fashion. It's not the Italy of postcards. It's better than that.

This is where arrosticini comes from. Small skewers of lamb, sometimes mutton, cooked fast over charcoal in a long narrow brazier called a furnacella, finished with salt. Shepherds made them because they were practical. Families made them on Sundays because they were easy and there was not too much else around. Italians are so brilliant at this…  at knowing when a recipe is is perfect as it is, and leaving it alone - sometimes they make it heritage approved. I love that.

Arrosticini has been eaten this way for centuries, and nobody has felt the need to change it. 

In the postwar decades, waves of Italian families made their way to Australia, many from exactly these kinds of regions: the rural south, the mountain communities, places where recipes weren't written down because nobody needed to write them down. Families arrived in Melbourne, with what they know, their Sunday rituals, their recipes, and they got on with it. That's the foundation our food culture is built on. We take real pride in eating well in this city, and we should, because it was a gift. Dish by dish, family by family.

David's father was one of those people. He was Abruzzese, and when he made a life here, the food came with him. David grew up knowing arrosticini through his father's hands: what they tasted like, what occasions they belonged to, the ritual of the furnacella and the way the lamb should char at the edges but stay tender inside. It's the sort of knowledge that doesn't come from a recipe. It comes from watching, and eating, and growing up at a table where this all happened..

"It's his dish, really. I'm just the one with the grill."

At Zoncello in Healesville, Chef David makes arrosticini the way they should be made. Straight off the charcoal, finished with the restaurant's own herb salt and a wedge of lemon. That's it. They arrive at the table still sizzling and they're gone almost immediately. (Side note: Order more. Honestly, just order more from the start.)

To also add to your order, please get the mortadella grigliata. Thinly sliced, grilled over the same charcoal, served with a pear mostarda that is one of the best things I've eaten in a while.