Over the past couple years, there has been a sort of culinary renaissance taking place that is reaching it’s prime in today’s food scene. Beer is now being seen as equally complex and diverse as wine and is now standing in the spotlight with one Toronto restaurant leading the way. My embarrassment for being a non-drinker sitting inside a restaurant designed to share the joys of beer quickly diminished as Chef Brian Morin, owner and executive chef of beerbistro was graciously candid with me about his career, his experiences, his opinions and his passion for food.

The 67 seat restaurant in the heart of Toronto’s business district is a veritable shrine to beer. The wood accents and tables are reminiscent of a traditional pub, yet a modern feel is brought in with the floor to (very high) ceiling windows, still in place from the building’s old days as a Bank of Montreal. The bar is nothing less than a beer-lover’s heaven with taps lined-up, leading down to the kegs kept in a custom-built underground storage cooler which is kept at an ideal temperature for serving a wide variety of beers from around the world. There are even gorgeous murals of beer glasses over the windows painted by a local distillery district artist, and I’m sitting and talking with one of North America’s top leaders in beer cuisine… drinking a Coke.

Currently viewed by many as a pioneer in the modern culinary scene in Toronto for setting a trend with his unique approach to using beer as the vehicle for an entire menu, Morin conveys to me that this is, without a doubt, what he was always meant to do. As other kids were playing hockey in the streets, 10-year-old Morin was wondering what he could cook next. Cooking was a calling for him at an early age, and he worked his way through the ranks of the culinary world to get to finally become owner and executive chef of his own restaurant.

Morin learned skills as a baker, a pastry chef, and almost every other position in the kitchen you can think of to make sure he became as well-rounded as he could, which is evident in his restaurant today. As I was led through the inner workings of the kitchen, Morin shows me the house-made sourdough bread (made with beer of course), the pizza oven, the vacuum sealer, and the new (and rare to Toronto restaurants) pressure-sealed marinating barrel. Even all the meats are cured in-house, rather than ordered as with the majority of restaurants. The one thing that stood out more than anything else as I was guided through the labyrinth of stainless steel, is that Morin is proud of what he’s built. He clearly knows what he’s talking about, and wears his passion for cooking on his sleeve for everyone to see.

In his own words, he’s a tradesman; someone who learns as much as he possibly can and works hard to become the best at what he does, in this case pairing distinguished beers with noble food. Morin is definitely at the top of this field. He’s constantly recognized by many as a leader for bringing this genre of food to the North American culinary scene, most recently being awarded the ‘Best Pulled Pork Sandwich’ in the city by food writer, Amy Pataki of the Toronto Star. Yet, with all his accomplishments, Morin humbly insists that the most rewarding thing about all of this is being able to bring a superior dining experience to his customers, while at the same time sharing his love for beer. After all, unlike the world of wines, which can be intimidating to many of us, beer bridges the gap between classes, cultures, and people from all over the world, yet can still be just as complex.

What impresses me the most about Morin’s kitchen philosophy is his eagerness to involve his staff in the creative process. He’s very selective about who he works with, and with a very low turnover (rare for restaurant industry workers), the cooks in the beerbistro kitchen are regularly being sent on educational trips, being given every opportunity to add to their skills and to be rewarded for their hard work. They’re a family. Anyone who’s ever worked in a kitchen before knows that when you spend that much time together, you have to be or it simply won’t work out. The chef has a beer with his staff before every shift (for educational purposes, of course!), as well as after closing. There’s a refreshing level of togetherness that seems to be lacking in many kitchens today.

Not too long ago you’d be hard-pressed to find good food paired with rare and high quality beers. Now, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of beerbistro, Morin has become North America’s gold-standard for beer cuisine, setting the trends in this relatively new-to-the-scene style of dining, as he takes us on an educational journey that is beginning to “change the way we think about beer.” By his own admittance, he will never be a household name in this current trend of celebrity chefs, nor does he wish to be. The tradesman does his job, does it well, and is fully content in the fact that everyday he wakes up to do exactly what he loves doing most.