By Andy Murdoch

Even Daniel Burns (BSc’98, BA’98) sometimes finds it difficult to believe that he opened a restaurant in New York City—but he’s getting used to the idea.

“There’s not many crazier things to do. It’s pretty wild,” says the Dartmouth, N.S. native.

That’s some classic Canadian understatement coming from a guy whose name sizzles on New Yorkers’ tongues these days as one of the city’s hottest chefs. With rave reviews and listings on many critics’ year-end picks, it’s proved a boon to start Luksus, his new restaurant, in the world’s most unforgiving culinary city.

All of this might seem far-fetched for a former barista and sandwich maker at the popular Halifax café Steve-O-Reno’s. However, Burns hasn’t learned from merely world-class chefs: the restaurants he worked at have rocked the foundations of fine dining. In the last 10 years, he moved from Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck (three Michelin stars), to Fergus Henderson’s St. John, to Rene Redzepi’s Noma (three-time winner of the world’s best restaurant), and finally, became head of research and development for David Chang’s Momofuku empire.

Redefining luxury

And now, in a small space behind a bar in Brooklyn that you might miss if you blinked, Daniel Burns has set out to follow in their footsteps. The name Luksus means “luxury” in Danish, but it’s an ironic statement, he says. He believes you can experience luxury in the back of a bar.

“Fine dining does not have an arrow pointing in one direction. I think it points to 12 million different ones now.” His Scandinavian-influenced, seven-course menu features finger foods and beer pairings. He prepares your meal in an open kitchen you can nearly touch.

Journalists often mention Burns’ degrees in mathematics and philosophy from Dalhousie, searching for an elusive gastronomic correlation, and he admittedly finds it hard to identify one himself. He’s more likely to talk about soccer than to discuss analytic philosophy. He won two bronze medals competing as a Dal Tiger, and he still plays, holding an annual charity tournament for chefs.

At Dal, Burns thought more about theorems and Greek letters than owning a restaurant. But after graduation, he couldn’t imagine himself teaching high school math. He had discovered a more profound pleasure: working with his hands in a kitchen.

Pursuing perfection

If there are lines to draw to his time at Dal, one could say that cooking is a precise craft where sport and science intersect. Every day, he’s in the game, thriving off the physical and intellectual demands of putting order to abstract ideas, exploring the science of cooking and performing daily feats for his guests. “It’s not any sort of airy artistic pursuit,” he says. “You’ve got to work at it and hone it. Consistency is everything.”

Less is more, he insists. Every ingredient is essential. “To narrow a dish down from 20 elements to just two or three is more difficult to do,” he explains, “but it is usually the best approach. It’s just finding out exactly which flavours you want to showcase.”

In some ways, you can see that he applies the same rigorous philosophy to life. He prepares ever-changing, intensely difficult menus for
critics who will judge his food and his career in a night. He does so in a spare kitchen, with minimal staff, pushing himself to hammer out new flavor axioms. And so far, people love what he does.

“There are so many worse scenarios in the cooking world, I am not complaining,” he says. “I live close to the shop. It’s a small, manageable entity. It’s awesome.”

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Dal Magazine.