Review: Ilis

The location of 150 Green Street in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint is marked by a nondescript door that prepares you little for what’s to follow. Behind it, a sprawling space with lofty ceilings has shed all vestiges of its former life as a warehouse. Instead, it is dressed with chic white couches and arresting art, and is anchored by an industrial open kitchen. This is Ilis, Noma co-founder Mads Refslund’s ambitious New York debut—its name a portmanteau of il and is, or fire and ice in Danish—that’s designed to shake up the way food is prepared, served, and enjoyed in restaurants. Here, there is no distinction between front and back of house—just “one house,” as Refslund remarked on opening night—and kitchen staff double up as servers. Because of the openness of its design, there’s an air of performance theater as chefs dive in and out of the giant freezers lined up against a wall, deftly tackle ingredients at broad prepping stations, and set dishes on fire.

Meanwhile, a roving bar cart makes its rounds with chilled appetizers that guests can pick from, and a surprise amuse-bouche—a peppery tomato clam broth served in a large, slightly ridiculous clamshell that’s been fashioned into a flask. Ilis currently offers two menus, a market option that offers a choice of five dishes, plus a dessert at $195 and the signature experience designed as an “omakase” tasting menu and priced at $395. The menu booklet is designed as a field guide with line drawings and notes: every key ingredient is given a page, and you decide how you want it prepared—fired-up or served chilled, or both. Several dishes involve fermenting and pickling that Refslund says was underway for months before the opening. The best parts of my own meal were the starters: oysters topped with cucumber and served with pineapple wedges instead of lemon; raw tuna with nasturtium and salted plum; and my favorite bite of the night, assorted grilled mushrooms served in a bowl made of lotus leaves. I paired my meal with a pale pink, acidic Rosado, a recommendation courtesy the sommelier (also a chef) from the restaurant’s 1000-deep wine list. For our main meal, we had a buttery brown trout cooked in birch leaves—a dish packed with flavor but a bit too rare for my taste. The plating here is consistently elaborate (think: beds of ice and rafts of twigs) but is balanced out by the modern-minimal glassware by Brooklyn-based glassblower William Couig and serveware by Janaki Larsen, a potter working in Vancouver. Elsewhere, my attention is drawn to a striking drying rack from which sunflowers and other produce hang, and a dazzling display of large-scale artworks including an Ai Weiwei piece made of Legos.