Luksus

I had been reading great things about Luksus, and finally made a reservation here for a Wednesday night. My foodie friend Amitha had also been wanting to check this place out, so the two of us ubered (how else do you get to Greenpoint?) out to Greenpoint to investigate what all the praise was about. 

Luksus is behind the beer bar Torst, and when you walk in, you feel like you are in a more chic version of IKEA (blond wood floors, streamlined designs, etc). My Danish boss informed me that Luksus means "luxury" in Danish, and joked that it seemed fitting for me, hardy har har.

Amitha and I had both tried to google what the menu was like and find out more about the place, but only found an Instagram account. I'm starting to like restaurants that have an element of surprise - in previous years I was always the person who yelped to see what the best thing on the menu was. I like not knowing what I'm going to get! The chef, Daniel Burns, worked at Noma and Momofuku, so I was excited to see what our experience would be like.

The menu is a five course tasting, and has an optional beer pairing.  You are also allowed to BYOB, with a $25 corkage fee. Amitha picked up a great bottle of red so we shared that. The menu changes monthly (or so), and after our meal here I definitely want to go back!

We were seated at the chefs counter, so we had a look at all the action in the kitchen. The first thing that caught my eye was the gleaming array of Le Creuset. I can't wait till my kitchen has a collection like this one!

                   

Our waitress brought out a few different snacks to get us started. The first were some crispy sunchokes. Ahhh we know how I am obsessed with those lately!

My favorite of the snack course was the lamb sweetbread with gribiche sauce. I was actually skeptical at first, since I wasn't sure how I felt about sweetbread, but I was pleasantly surprised. 

Another snack was a traditional Danish dish named Aebleskiver. Normally, this is a dessert dish topped with powdered sugar, but, ours was a savory version filled with duck and served with a cranberry jam side. 

Our first "real" course of the night was  seafood dish with scallops and uni. 

The second dish was another pleasant surprise. The broth was infused like a tea would be infused, so the resulting dish was very flavorful and smokey. I was "scarred" by the citronella broth served with my foie gras with my lunch in Reims, but this broth was anything but bland. 

And now for my favorite part: a perfectly seared rib eye. I'm starting to worry about the amount of red meat I've been eating lately. So good, but so bad.

We also had the chance to chat up the chef, Daniel Burns. He told us that he aged this ribeye in his meat lockers downstairs, and showed us photos of how it looked before (huge and pinkish) and after (smaller and darker brown). I don't know anything about dry aging other than it produced a magnificent steak, so as far as I'm concerned, it's great. My understanding is that when you dry age beef, it becomes more tender (and this was definitely true with our dish). See, learn something new every day!

I forgot to photo the "palate cleanser", which was a cranberry flavored sorbet type dish. Our dessert was very unique, at least, for me it was, since I normally stuff my face with chocolate based desserts. This dessert wasn't overly sweet, and it certainly wasn't savory. It was just the right amount of everything to close out our fantastic meal. 

And last but not least, we were provided a menu at the end of our meal. 

                                 

But of course, I still Yelp everything, so the next day I signed on to write up my thoughts. I was surprised by the number of not so great reviews since I had a great meal. While I normally don't like going to restaurants in NYC more than once, this is one I will definitely want to go visit once more!