MIAMI (VINnews) — For many French cooks, a kitchen without butter is hard to imagine. For Olivia Ostrow, it is the rule.

The Paris-born restaurateur, who appeared on Food Network’s “24 in 24: Last Chef Standing,” runs Maison Ostrow, a glatt kosher French-Mediterranean restaurant in South Florida. Because the menu is meat-based, dairy cannot be mixed into the dishes — a constraint that cuts against a cuisine built on butter, cream and cheese.

“Can you really make great French food without butter? Yes and no,” Ostrow told Fox News Digital.

Duck fat is one stand-in. Her kitchen has also developed its own nondairy versions of ingredients that would otherwise be off limits. She said the restaurant makes its own cheese and a butter alternative, and serves house-made baguettes with about seven versions of that spread, including truffle, spicy and Provençal. Some diners are surprised to learn it is not conventional butter.

Butter is not the hardest gap to close. Asked which dish is toughest to adapt, Ostrow said desserts. Her team built a stand-in for mascarpone for a tableside tiramisu and reworked steak au poivre, whose classic peppercorn sauce is usually creamy. Chefs also spend hours on sauces and dressings, including a dairy-free product meant to taste like blue cheese.

She said a dish does not go on the menu if it would not meet what a diner expects in a traditional French restaurant in Paris. The testing raises labor costs. “Yeah, my labor’s a little high because we work a little harder,” she said.

Ostrow opened her first glatt kosher restaurant about a month before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. She said Jewish identity had long been central to her life, and that the aftermath strengthened her decision to treat the business as a public statement rather than retreat. “I did not feel that I needed to go into hiding,” she said. “I felt like I needed it to grow my business and make it even more of a statement.”

She is now looking beyond the original restaurant, with plans to expand the Maison Baguette sandwich concept and Ostrow Privé, a kosher fine-dining service for private jets and yachts. The company is also moving toward grab-and-go food at airports, she said.