Cultured & Salted is where cultured butter meets kitchen craft — a blend of cooking, writing, and the restaurant life, shaped by someone who lives all three.

I’m Michelle Webb: chef, writer, owner of Wedgewood Cheese Bar, and an unapologetic believer that butter can tell you everything you need to know about a cook. I’ve spent the last several years building a restaurant from the ground up, writing about the foods that made me, and discovering that the through-line in all of it is simple: good food tells the truth.

This site is my creative home. A place where technique matters, ingredients matter, and the stories behind them matter most. Not a lifestyle blog. Not a collection of “easy weeknight dinners.” Something more personal — and more craft-driven.

Here, you’ll find: recipes that reflect a real chef’s kitchen, not a test kitchen, essays about food, work, family, and the restaurant life, deep-dives into butter and cultured dairy (because of course), behind-the-scenes looks at building and running a restaurant, and cooking guidance rooted in skill, flavor, and intuition rather than shortcuts.

Cultured & Salted is built on the belief that food is both craft and culture — something you learn by doing, tasting, failing, trying again, and feeding people you love (and sometimes feeding people at scale under pressure on a Saturday night).

It’s also built on the idea that butter is not just an ingredient. It’s a lens. A story. A starting point.

If you’re here, you’re probably someone who appreciates the smell of toasted milk solids, the quiet power of technique, the difference that salted and cultured dairy makes, the rhythm of restaurant service, the poetry inside a well-written recipe, the chaos and beauty of a life built around feeding people

Same. I’m glad you’re here.