When it comes to interpreting continental food at his new TAK Room in Hudson Yards and the Surf Club Restaurant in Miami Beach, Thomas Keller has gone well beyond Wellington, Thermidor and Rockefeller to sweat the small stuff. Fancy butter curls, once commonplace and presented in restaurants over little ice cubes in a glass dish, was one example. With Martin Kastner, whose design firm, Crucial Detail, makes the platters for the Bocuse d’Or cooking contest, Mr. Keller created a gadget with a stainless-steel base to hold the butter and a bone china top with holes that is pushed down over the base so the butter curls emerge; it’s like a tabletop cookie press. Homemade butter curls need a simpler tool, often costing around $10 and resembling a miniature Bo Peep crook.
TAK Room, Hudson Yards, takroomnyc.com, surfclubrestaurant.com.
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