Unforgettable Lyst

In the port in the ancient town of Vejle, elegantly placed on the fiord bearing the same name, you can have a passionate and unforgettable experience.

Restaurant Lyst was imagined and desired strongly by entrepreneur and graphic designer Morten Kirk Johansen, who passed away in 2021. An incredibly charismatic man, with an untamed creativity and a fantastic dry humour that conquered all; he was indeed a visionary, but well rooted in his beloved Danish land, aware of how much riches it could offer. A land that raised him and shaped him, guiding him and inspiring him to create a place and a restaurant concept completely unique, that could have the capacity and power to stimulate senses, primordial perceptions and authentic emotions.

Lyst is this and much more. Kirk Johansen has created an experience within the experience: so when you walk up the stairs to the restaurant, you can listen to a recording of the sounds of the fiord, like the squawking of the seagulls, the lapping of the waves, the rustling of the moored boats, the blowing of the wind from the north. In the toilette instead you can listen to Danish folk music and songs while in the main dining room you experience the feeling of sailing, through the mobile sails that act as a cocoon for the table, and which when you touch them, move like with the wind. Every detail becomes part of a whole, and the sensorial experience becomes unique.

To accomplish this highly experiential dream, Kirk Johansen picked a good chef: the very young Daniel McBurnie, now in his thirties, who was already working in his restaurant Remouladen in Vejle, and made the perfect match to transform that dream into a reality, thanks also to the profound friendship and respect that they have shared in building this project and in life.

The experience at Lyst starts among the docks at the port of Vejle, under the low skies of Denmark: a gangway connects the land to the Fjordenhus buildings where the restaurant is located, and whose foundations are set straight into the sea, giving you a feeling of almost suspension in time and space. The building is an artistic work created in partnership with Studio Other Spaces and with famous architects Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann.

The dining room team welcomes guests at Lyst with a welcome soup (in our case, lobster soup). They will then guide the guests throughout the long culinary journey. Before going up to the first floor of the building, sipping hot soup, they tell you the origins and architectural features of the building, inviting the guests to recall the different lights and reflexes created by the windows and by the bricks which will bestow new sensations and colours once you will return home.

The gastronomic experience at Lyst lasts on average 4-5 hours and is available on Thursdays and Fridays in the evening, and on Saturdays for lunch: in this temporal window, guests move and fluctuate in the different rooms of the restaurant, from the open bar area to the room with the sails, from the area with the ice table and where they serve dishes like mussels, to the outdoor barbecue area where they are asked to take part in the cooking of the fish or the meat, and where you can taste the sparkling air of the port.

The offer at list Lyst represents and oozes with a powerful essence a concept of cuisine that wants to convey to the guests the richness and authenticity of strictly local raw materials, sourced within 45 minutes from the restaurant, so that sustainability is one of the pillars on which its culinary philosophy is based.

Chef Daniel McBurnie, born in Sydjylland in Denmark to English father, has a varied experience which includes Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, England, two-starred AOC and Hotel d'Angleterre, both in Copenhagen. In 2016, when he met Morten Kirk Johansen, he became executive head chef at restaurant Remouladen and since April 2019 he’s the executive head chef at Lyst; both restaurants are in Vejle.

Two years after opening, and considering the pandemic, Lyst has received its first star in September 2021 on top of the green star for its commitment for the environment, its work ethics and its fight against food waste.

McBurnie calls himself a «non-chef» with a typically Nordic approach, in that he doesn’t focus his dishes on a massive and overpowering use of herbs: instead, he prefers all that is created on the moment, based on the available raw materials. «It’s ingredients that rule the menu: now it’s lobster season because the water is very cold [the original piece was published in spring], so all the creativity and the dishes will try to enhance lobsters, without discarding any part. The same goes for instance for the onion, of which we also use the peel to make soup».

Every day they offer just one menu that reflects the weather and the season and is made of 20 courses, influenced by the four elements – air, fire, water and earth – well explained by the compass at the beginning.

A dish that is never missing is Bread with butter in the Scandinavian style, paired with a glass of Krug: in the butter, guests have fun leaving the mark of their teeth. Placed under the sea, Lyst also has a large cellar with a wide range of wines from all over, paired with care and skill to the tasting menu.

THE DISHES

[[ima26]][[ima27]]Lyest
Havneøen 1
Vejle, Denmark
+4575738500
info@restaurantlyst.com
Tasting menu: 2300 dkk (alcoholic pairing, 1700, 2700 and 6500 dkk)
Open only on Thursdays and Fridays in the evening, and on Saturdays for lunch

 

Translated into English by Slawka G.Scarso