Daniel Burns talks about beer with the zeal of the recently converted. “There’s such a spectrum of flavour,” he says. “With beer, you can add whatever you think might work, you can play around. Wine is so dependent on terroir.”
Burns is not a brewer but a chef: co-owner of Luksus in New York, the first beer-only restaurant to win a Michelin star. It’s unlikely to be the last. From the southern Indian restaurant Quilon in London, where beers begin the drinks list, to Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan, where the choices run to eight pages, beer has been invited to join the fine dining club.
Luksus, a joint venture between Burns and brewer Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergso, is found at the back of their bar Torst, a white-marble beer paradise in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with 21 beers on tap. Though neighbour to takeaway joints and street-corner grocery stores, both Torst and Luksus are designed along clean Scandinavian lines (Luksus means “luxury” in Danish).