Chef Nick Curtin of Copenhagen’s Alouette turns seasonal ingredients, kitchen byproducts and unexpected flavors into one of the restaurant’s most distinctive nonalcoholic pairing experiences.
Camilla HansenHow Nick Curtin Is Growing Danish Terroir From Field To Glass
Nick Curtin has spent much of his 12 years in Denmark trying to disprove one sentence.
Before opening Alouette in Copenhagen, Curtin and his wife, Camilla Hansen, were recruited for a restaurant project about an hour north of the city. The owner asked what Curtin wanted to cook. He replied that he wanted to use the best ingredients the surrounding land could provide.
“Then you should have moved to France,” the owner told him.
The partnership ended. The remark stayed with Curtin.
At Alouette today, his response can arrive in a glass made from Danish Discovery apples, brown butter, gooseberry and cascading lime thyme. It tastes like unripe pineapple, although it contains none. Served beside white asparagus, fig leaf oil and caviar, the drink turns the dish into something close to a piña colada.
It belongs to Alouette’s Field Pairing, a nonalcoholic experience developed by Assistant Service Director Aaron Pearse Gavin, who playfully serves as the restaurant’s “NAmmelier.”
Curtin’s argument reaches beyond whether Denmark can grow a great strawberry or white asparagus. Through Alouette Fields, his team is helping cultivate unusual crops on a 500-year-old family farm outside Copenhagen. The restaurant contributes labor, accepts part of the financial risk and gives those ingredients a path to diners.
“Our dream is to become an active participant in Danish agriculture, not just a customer of it,” Curtin tells Forbes.
Gavin carries the idea into Alouette’s drinks. He uses cold pressing, fat-washing, infusion and careful seasoning to transform crops into something that can stand beside Curtin’s food. Those same fields can inform the cocktails served later in the evening, when guests move into the lounge for final bites and a concluding drink.
At Alouette, terroir does not end when the plate leaves the table.
What Danish Terroir Tastes Like
Curtin heard Denmark compared unfavorably with France before he had the chance to test what the country’s farms could produce.
The comparison frustrated him because it dismissed ingredients many Danish diners had barely encountered.
“A Danish strawberry or white asparagus from northern Sjælland will absolutely change your life,” Curtin says. “These products are barely accessible in Danish supermarkets, much less sold internationally as high-value items.”
Agriculture covers 2.6 million hectares in Denmark. Cereals occupied approximately 1.2 million hectares in 2025, according to Statistics Denmark.
Those numbers help show the scale confronting smaller producers experimenting with less familiar vegetables, fruit and herbs. Growing an unusual crop requires a buyer. Planting it again requires evidence that somebody wants it.
Curtin believes restaurants can help create that demand. A chef can place an unfamiliar ingredient within a memorable dish, explain where it was grown and give diners a reason to ask for it again.
“Change is risk for farmers,” Curtin says. “As a restaurant, we are uniquely positioned to take on the risk and drive demand by creating it.”
Terroir at Alouette appears in the difference between apples from two orchards or in the bitterness of a leek grown on one particular farm. Those differences shape the food, the Field Pairing and any cocktail that eventually carries the ingredient into the lounge.
Why Nick Curtin Left New York
Curtin arrived in Copenhagen after building a serious restaurant career in New York. The work had gradually lost its pull.
Conversations with owners kept returning to dishes believed to be safe for business.
“Let’s put a burger on the menu,” he remembers hearing.
“Did I make a damn good burger? Absolutely,” Curtin says. “Was it what I wanted to be doing? No.”
He wanted his food to express a clear point of view. He also wanted enough time outside the kitchen to maintain relationships and interests unrelated to restaurants.
“I wanted my food to mean something,” he says. “Following the crowd was simply not why I became a chef.”
Moving to Denmark exposed him to a different approach to restaurant employment. Full-time workers receive at least five weeks of paid holiday and generally accrue holiday allowance equal to 12.5 percent of salary, according to Workindenmark.
“The Danish system didn’t treat people as tools,” Curtin says. “It treated them as investments.”
Curtin and Hansen carried that thinking into Alouette, which opened in 2018 and received its first Michelin star eight months later. Their employment model includes a shorter workweek, pensions, paid leave and support for continuing education.
Copenhagen also gave Curtin room to reconsider how a restaurant could work with its farmers, cooks and drinks team.
“The idea that a restaurant could come at the benefit of employees, instead of at their expense, is the gift Copenhagen gave us,” he says.
How The Field Pairing Earned Its Name
The term “Field Pairing” gives Alouette’s nonalcoholic program an identity that does not depend on what has been removed.
“It means the drinks come from the same place as the food, both literally and in how I think about them,” Gavin says.
He works with ingredients grown around Copenhagen and with the farmers supplying Curtin’s kitchen. Sometimes the drink and dish share the same crop. He may also focus on a part the cooks cannot easily place on the plate.
“I like that it is called the Field Pairing rather than the non-alcoholic pairing,” Gavin says. “It gives it its own identity. It is another way through the menu, built specifically for the food.”
The restaurant’s alcoholic and nonalcoholic options give guests different paths through the tasting menu. According to Alouette’s current booking description, those choices include the Field Pairing, Cellar Pairing and Reserve Cellar Pairing. The experience concludes in the lounge with final bites and a cocktail, coffee or tea.
Gavin’s advantage is control. He can adjust acidity, bitterness, aroma and texture around a specific course. The drink can disappear from the menu when the crop behind it is no longer available.
That freedom comes with pressure. Every structural decision has to be made inside the restaurant.
A Drink Built Like A Cocktail
Gavin enters menu development while the kitchen is still deciding what a dish will become.
“I try to be involved early enough that I understand what the dish is trying to end up as,” he says.
A pairing may work during an initial tasting and collapse after one small addition to the plate. Gavin cites anise hyssop as the kind of ingredient that can disrupt the entire balance.
“Throw a little bit of anise hyssop on there and all bets are off,” he says.
The exchange works in both directions. Gavin can tell the cooks when his drink reveals a promising flavor. They can tell him when the pairing pulls attention away from the ingredient they want the guest to notice.
“Being involved from as early as possible means the pairing feels natural,” he says. “When you jump in at the end, it can sometimes feel forced.”
His white asparagus pairing illustrates the process.
Gavin starts with cold-pressed Discovery apple juice from an organic orchard about 45 minutes outside Copenhagen. He fat-washes it with brown butter, a technique more readily associated with modern cocktail bars than juice service.
The liquid is cold-infused overnight, seasoned with lightly salted gooseberry juice and refrigerated for another night with cascading lime thyme. Together, those ingredients create the impression of unripe pineapple.
The drink has to cut through fig leaf oil and caviar without overwhelming the white asparagus. Excessive brown butter would make it heavy. Too much gooseberry could erase the quieter flavors on the plate.
When the balance works, the drink changes the next bite.
“All of a sudden, it’s a piña colada,” Gavin says.
The preparation sounds elaborate when separated into steps. Gavin wants the finished glass to feel much simpler.
“In the glass, it should just make sense,” he says.
Making Alcohol-Free Drinks Feel Luxurious
According to Alouette’s current menu, the Field Pairing costs 1,200 Danish kroner, about $187. The two alcoholic pairing options cost 1,400 DKK and 2,500 DKK.
A complete evening with the Field Pairing is priced at 3,500 DKK, only 250 DKK below the equivalent experience with the standard alcoholic pairing.
The narrow difference reflects the restaurant’s belief that an alcohol-free drink can earn a luxury price through its ingredients, scarcity and development time.
A Field Pairing drink may take several days to produce after another week or two spent developing the recipe.
“I think luxury is the feeling that something has been made specifically for you,” Gavin says.
Gavin’s creations may have none of that scaffolding. Their value has to emerge through temperature, glassware, service and what happens when the guest returns to the food.
“It should arrive in the right glass, at the right temperature and feel completely considered alongside the dish,” he says.
The limited scale contributes to that luxury.
“What I can do is serve a drink that exists for this menu, in this time, made in this building and in a smaller quantity than a wine producer would ever consider,” Gavin says. “This is like a couture atelier of the non-alcoholic. That feels luxurious to me.”
The broader drinks market is becoming more receptive to serious alcohol-free options. IWSR estimates that global volume for no-alcohol beer, wine, spirits and ready-to-drink products grew 9 percent in 2025. It forecasts 36 percent growth between 2024 and 2029, when the category is expected to exceed 18 billion annual servings. IWSR’s research included nearly 8,000 legal-drinking-age consumers across 10 markets.
Those figures describe packaged beverages rather than $187 restaurant pairings. Alouette is making a harder argument. Each drink must justify its price beside Michelin-starred cooking.
“A serious program needs research and development time and somebody who actually owns it and cares about it,” Gavin says. “It cannot just be handed to someone after everything else is finished with a vague instruction to make something interesting.”
Alouette Moves Into The Field
Alouette Fields operates at Seerupgaard, a 500-year-old family farm outside Copenhagen.
Curtin says its farmer, Neel, suffered a knee injury followed by surgeries that prevented her from harvesting the property herself. Alouette had gradually become one of the farm’s largest customers. Taking a more active role helped keep the land productive during her recovery.
The first season includes Badger Flame beets, Red Dragon napa cabbage and a small melon suited to a colder climate.
Curtin recalls encountering a locally grown melon only once during his 12 years in Denmark. Melon vines ordinarily consume valuable tunnel space, so the Alouette Fields team is training them vertically. The method improves air circulation, reduces mildew and creates room for more plants.
“I cannot wait to see the looks on our guests’ faces when we serve them Danish melon,” Curtin says.
Its flesh may appear on a plate. The skin, seeds and fruit that fail a visual inspection could give Gavin material for a pairing or cocktail.
That second use is commercially important. One crop can create several moments across the evening instead of producing a single course.
What The Kitchen Can Give The Bar
Direct relationships with farmers change what Gavin can place in a glass.
“I’m not just working with whatever apple I can get my hands on or a bit of thyme from the supermarket,” he says.
He knows the orchard behind an apple and how a specific herb behaves when infused. A forager may arrive with something that sends the next drink in an unexpected direction.
“I pull my notes of the 12 different apples I tasted last year or the type of seaweed the kitchen used two weeks ago,” Gavin says. “A forager we work with might just swing by the restaurant with something to taste, and that might spark something for a new pairing.”
The kitchen also tells him what arrived in abundance, what will disappear quickly and which parts are unlikely to reach the plate.
Walnut skins bring bitterness and grip. Strawberry tops offer a greener expression of the fruit. Tomato skins contribute umami. Whey can supply acidity and texture.
These qualities also matter in cocktails. A spirit may provide strength and warmth, but the surrounding ingredients determine how the drink moves across the palate. Bitterness can keep sweetness in check. Acidity gives the drink definition. Infused woods, herbs and fruit skins can add aroma without relying on artificial flavoring.
Gavin refuses to use a byproduct solely because it would otherwise be discarded.
“That is not enough of a reason,” he says. “It still has to make the drink better.”
He is equally wary of treating rescued ingredients as a moral victory.
“There’s a danger of becoming far too pleased with yourself because you rescued something from the bin,” Gavin says. “The guest still has to enjoy it. It still has to taste good.”
Curtin points to blackcurrant wood as one of Nordic cooking’s overlooked flavors. Alouette uses it for smoking, tea and an infused oil that he says can resemble extra-virgin olive oil. In a drink, its tannin can supply structure and grip.
“Wow,” Curtin says. “Tannic, sour, fruity. Extremely versatile.”
The Cocktail At The End Of Dinner
After approximately two and a half hours in Alouette’s dining room, guests move into the lounge for final bites and a cocktail, coffee or tea.
Curtin calls the transition “a long exhale.”
The lighting becomes darker and the progression of the tasting menu loosens. Guests have time to sit with what they have experienced.
The cocktail changes the mood without abandoning the agricultural story. A local herb, preserved fruit or smoke can return in a less formal form. Guests may choose an alcoholic drink or continue without alcohol.
This final choice gives drinks a role from the beginning of dinner through departure. The Field Pairing handles the close relationship between each course and glass. The lounge cocktail allows the same ingredients to speak more freely.
Curtin admits to feeling a small pang when a guest drinks only water throughout the meal. A carefully built drink may reveal an aroma that otherwise remains quiet. Its acidity can also prepare the palate for what follows.
“What is in the glass impacts the way we taste and perceive the food,” he says.
Gavin tests his drinks where the guest will encounter them. Something impressive in isolation can feel completely wrong several servings into a tasting menu.
“You’ve got to taste these drinks where the guest will actually drink them,” he says.
He wants beverage professionals to stop treating alcohol as the dividing line between serious and lesser drinks.
“Never think that because a guest has ordered non-alcoholic that they’ve ordered or expected a lesser experience,” Gavin says.
A Restaurant Built Around Rest
Curtin’s approach to sustainability includes the people preparing and serving those drinks.
In his first New York leadership role, he regularly worked close to 100 hours a week. He arrived around 9 a.m. and sometimes left at 2 a.m. When a boss summoned him to the office, Curtin expected concern about how overwhelmed he had become.
The boss questioned whether 9 a.m. was too late to begin the day.
Curtin continued at that pace until panic attacks forced him to reconsider.
“I had to deprogram myself,” he says. “I had to rid myself of the mentality that the answer was to just work harder.”
A joint analysis from the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization found that working at least 55 hours per week was associated with a 35 percent greater risk of stroke and a 17 percent greater risk of dying from ischemic heart disease compared with a 35-to-40-hour week. Long working hours contributed to an estimated 745,000 deaths in 2016, according to the WHO.
Curtin and Hansen also see rest as a way to protect the restaurant’s investment in its cooks, bartenders and service professionals. Training takes time. The accumulated knowledge disappears when exhaustion drives people away.
Alouette has not released retention figures or margins that would allow direct comparison with conventional fine-dining restaurants. Curtin is candid about the financial pressure. Among the restaurant’s principles of purpose, people, planet and profit, he says profit has been the hardest to protect in recent years.
“We’ve been a healthy business for eight years,” he says. “It isn’t easy, but it is possible.”
The Economic Test For Danish Terroir
The Michelin Guide selected Curtin for Mindful Voices, a platform highlighting hospitality professionals reconsidering how their industries operate. Michelin unveiled the initiative at its Nordic Countries ceremony in Copenhagen on June 1, 2026, with an international rollout planned. Michelin says the project will eventually extend beyond gastronomy.
The recognition raises expectations around Alouette’s work.
Alouette Fields must produce crops good enough for diners to remember and valuable enough for farmers to plant again. The Field Pairing and lounge cocktails face the same test. Their agricultural stories cannot carry drinks that fail on flavor.
Curtin believes deliciousness creates demand. Demand gives farmers an economic reason to continue.
Gavin applies that standard to apple juice, walnut skins and whey. Every ingredient must earn its place before anyone explains where it came from. Adding a spirit does not remove that obligation. Leaving alcohol out does not lower it.
If the Danish melon succeeds, Alouette may serve it more than once. Its flesh could appear on the plate. The skin, seeds or imperfect fruit might return later in the Field Pairing or a cocktail served in the lounge.
That would give Curtin his clearest answer to the person who told him to move to France.
Denmark’s future is already growing. Alouette is trying to make it valuable enough to plant, pour and serve again.