Canada’s first butter bar is coming to Port Credit

Butter has long inspired acts of devotion. Butter fondue candles—the wacky cousin to the butter board—recently went viral on TikTok. Last summer, the CNE served a Wisconsin-style butter burger, much to the delight of the GTA’s cardiologists. And every November, the likenesses of presidents, celebrities and athletes carved into soft golden statues fill the halls of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. Butter is a beautiful thing.

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Later this spring, Port Credit will get its own shrine to butter with Butter Bar, a storefront hawking locally made small-batch butters from the creative mind of Kate Engineer. She’s known at the Port Credit Farmers’ Market as “the butter babe” and to friends as “chief executive churner,” and she’s been preaching the gospel of butter for about eight years. After launching her hospitality business in 2023, she got to churning bespoke blends—first for friends and family, though she eventually found herself slammed with orders. Now, she’s opening her own store.

“I grew up in a butter-loving household,” she says. “Our family owned a restaurant, and we had an allegiance to butter over olive oil. A few years ago, I had a dream to make a flight of melted butters to dunk shrimp in—now I have a whole business. For two years, I was a one-woman butter show, churning the butters in my kitchen, but now I’m working with a local family-owned creamery to scale up.”

At Butter Bar, Engineer’s compound butters are the main event, and they come in sweet or savoury varieties like cinnamon-sugar-nutmeg or thyme-sage-rosemary. Because they’re small-batch and contain less salt, she says, they’re silkier and higher in delicious fat than big-brand butters.

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“I’ll be expanding beyond our four core and two seasonal flavours at the shop, rotating flavours as the market demands, but I’ll never be able to take our most popular truffle-garlic butter off of the menu,” says Engineer. “I used it just this morning to make scrambled eggs, and it reminded me just how convenient the butters are to cook with. They take the prep work of chopping garlic or herbs out completely. One simple ingredient can instantly feel gourmet.”

Also on deck at Butter Bar: grazing boards, custom-order butters, butter-themed wares like cute linens for butter fingers and butter holders, culinary gadgets and tools, and potentially some pop-up events with local cracker companies and bakeries. Like many a fancy olive oil shop, Engineer plans to install a tasting counter where visitors can try before they buy.

Butter Bar’s official opening date has yet to be announced, but once it gets churning, Port Credit will be a popular place to break bread—and then drown it in butter.