ILIS — Restaurant in New York

UPDATE: Had our second dinner, the full market table experience vs the field table experience we had earlier.

The pros: Service has improved greatly. We had one main server and they did mind my egg allergy. Best dish by far: the antelope steak.

Cons: Tho they were mindful of the allergy, often I just got dishes where the egg part (the mousse) was removed or I was instructed i couldn’t eat an item (the uni). As a result, those dishes felt lacking. No attempt was made to offset the super sour notes of a bare granita sans mousse.

More importantly, several dishes just missed the mark - being overworked (like the crab dish that tasted only faintly of crab) or weirdly plated (grilled eel “on the cob” that fell off its cob at first bite; the flounder that you scrape from the fish itself, inevitably getting bones). I get that they’re trying to stay very close to the ingredients, but it can be to the detriment of the flavor.

Lastly, of the 12 courses, it wasn’t until the 10th that we finally got a carb or substantial vegetable (a delicious white bean in pumpkin stew). It’s all fish or meat prior to that. So great for paleo diet folks. Not so great if you want a balanced experience.

Prior review: I'm quite mixed on this experience. I was so looking forward to my dinner here. I pre-purchased a table in late Dec (yes, full money down at the time of reservation, non-refundable), and when a last minute table opened up in mid Nov, I grabbed it. But my experience in Nov doesn’t bode well for that pre-paid Dec visit… There were definitely highs - the food was, largely, a 4.5 experience. Amazing, buttery halibut (albeit small for two people) and a juicy, deliciously grilled rib of wild boar (also small). The one misstep was the weird crudite starter - a few tiny bits of raw cauliflower crammed in a pot full of not really edible “soil”/dough. It was more concept than taste/execution.

Where Ilis really fell down for me was service. The service was a) slow and b) all over the place. Multiple people waited on us. I told the first person, who I thought was our main waiter, about my egg allergy. Then, we wound up talking to someone else about seafood “snacks” - an up charge for those on top of your prepaid amount, of course. I ordered a few oysters, the weird clam drink thing (not worth the $8 for just brine) and then uni. The oyster was great but the uni, which I was really looking forward to, gave me pause. It was couched in a bed of mousse - and I can’t eat most mousses due to the poultry egg allergy. I asked a diff server if it had egg. Sure enough, she comes back later to take the dish away. That’s it. No apology. No replacement dish offered. I wasn’t even sure if I was still paying for that extra “snack.” When I asked, she said they’d find something to replace it - but they never did. Then a different server (catching a theme?) came over to ask more questions about my allergy. After fully debriefing that server, I figured all would be ok. It is until we get to the dessert: a little scoop of ice cream amidst some other flavor enhancers. Some homemade ice cream has undercooked egg. So I ask to - does this have egg? And yet another server comes and whisks the dish away. It apparently did.

For a fine dining experience where you’re paying $700-1000 for a meal for two, I expect that if I tell my server about a serious allergy, I won’t have to worry about the dishes I’m served. But I had to tell three separate people - and double-check two items that wound up having egg! To me, that is beyond ridiculous. And never did anyone ever apologize.

When I enjoy a fine dining experience, it’s in large part for the food - but also for the service. The service here is a far cry from Le Bernardin or other similarly priced restaurants. And due to the layout - with the busy kitchen.

Due to my earlier nonrefundable reservation made for Dec, I’ll be going yet again - and hoping for a better experience. The service slips could be the growing pains of a new restaurant, and if they are, I’ll update...

My friends have mixed opinions — whether ILIS is good or not. We decided to go as a group of four, also celebrating my friend’s mom’s birthday.

Unfortunately, the absurdly bad service and mediocre food left us not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It’s surprising to get this kind of experience at such a price and still have ambitions for Michelin stars. I hope they improve, but it was a disaster.

I should note that only in NY we’ve been to Eleven Madison Park, Per Se, Aska, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. My friends call me a foodie, and I've been doing restaurant PR for over 10 years, working with Michelin-starred establishments. I can forgive and explain a lot, but sometimes little things add up to a bigger picture that can’t be ignored. This was one of those cases.

Let’s start with the funny part.

The water. We asked for sparkling water, expecting it to come in bottles. It seems like they carbonate it themselves, but the filters and water quality are very poor. We refused to drink it and asked for a bottle instead, apologizing for not explaining earlier. But throughout the evening, the "caring" waitstaff (everyone here helps everyone else) kept topping off our glasses with bottled water, which caused confusion and the need to replace glasses repeatedly.

Cutlery. Another distinctive feature of such service is that the chefs presenting the dishes don’t care if you have forks, so we often found ourselves without them. We had to raise our hands, but with such an approach to service, everyone is busy presenting dishes, unable to step away from the set mechanism to find a fork, so it took too long by the standards of a dish cooling down. We also noticed that they persistently returned chopsticks to the plate even though we had already used them.

Smells. For the start of the week and mid-August, a half-empty dining room might not be a big problem, so I’ll just note that. However, instead of a pleasant smell of food — or at worst, bread — there was a smell of stale fish or meat. We sniffed around for a while — either it was the location of our table near the aged meat, or it was the tray they brought to each table, or it’s just a general smell they need to work on. Fresh food smells different and doesn’t repel our company.

The food. Too simple. A fried mushroom drowned in butter. Okay. What’s the idea? A flower made of beetroot and peach in an ice cup where the sauce has sunk into the central hole and can’t be reached. In all three desserts, caramel is the dominant element. Gazpacho where a bell pepper serves as a dish you have to drink from a zucchini flower stem, but ice crystals get stuck in the narrow stem, making it impossible to reach the soup. Tuna was disappointing. However, the fish presentation was noteworthy — the first part was served as sashimi, and the second was grilled and served with mini potatoes. But where are the techniques or any thought process? By the standards of our dinner, this was the best dish, but how much we had to lower our standards for it to become so…

Birthday congratulations. Somewhere in the middle of dinner, a cheerful waiter remembered, "I still haven’t wished you a happy birthday! Whose birthday is it?" And in the end, there was a cake, of course, with caramel. In other restaurants, this happens differently. Every staff member congratulates you; they all gather around.

Let’s remember, the restaurant was almost empty, but maybe there were fewer people on the shift.

Draw your own conclusions but after everything I said I can’t recommend this...

We were very excited to try this place being fans of Alinea and Noma, but this experience fell short of our expectations in many ways.

Service: Everyone was pleasant and friendly, but they really need to pay more attention to detail.

We noted in our Resy reservation one of us has a scallop aversion, responded to an email asking us about dietary restrictions of said scallop aversion, then told our server about the scallop aversion when we seated after being asked again of dietary restrictions. She also did not appear to have known about the restriction beforehand, which made us feel like she did not even bother reading the note, and reassured us the scallop aversion isn’t an issue. Then guess what, I still got served scallops! One apology, and 10 minutes of waiting later, they brought over a carrot soup. This isn’t a big issue but this shouldn’t be happening at a restaurant charging close to $400 per person. Also thankfully, it wasn’t an allergy.

We also did not leave with a menu explaining the food we ate or list of wines we got to try, which is the norm for restaurants of this price point and caliber. There also were no snacks/treats to take home (also customary of restaurants in this price point) and no add ons to the menu (or we weren’t made of aware of such options). Our check was dropped on the table the moment our desserts were taken away (as in our server with the check was right behind the other server taking away our plates), which we also don’t experience often… usually, the check is brought over when asked.

We also started off with ordering 2 cocktails that never came and our server completely forgot about.

Food: Honestly, it was OK. Nothing tasted bad but nothing was outrageously impressive either. The antelope was interesting and we appreciated the eel, but nothing was innovative, which we expected based on the founder being a Noma alum.

We aren’t people with big appetites but we found ourselves not stuffed to the brim, which also is not the norm for us at these kinds of restaurants. If they had not given us the bread course, we would likely be still hungry afterwards. We could imagine some people could leave hungry.

Wine pairing: phenomenal and we really appreciated the inclusion of sakes, which paired really well with the seafood-heavy menu. Highlight of our meal.

Space: The space is gorgeous. High-end Brooklyn warehouse vibes, very different from the other similar fine dining experiences in the city (comparing mostly to Aska, also in Brooklyn and Scandinavian).

Summary: It was OK - but it was too expensive and the backgrounds of the founders are too impressive to be just OK. It should’ve been phenomenal, and it COULD have been. Hope this review helps them do better because I really want this place to succeed. Our other friends have tried the cheaper menu (Market Menu) at $195 and had a better experience. You even get a fun activity of choosing your ingredients, which the Field Menu does not provide. I think we would’ve left happier if we had done that, as nothing in the Field Menu made it feel like we had pay the premium for a reason. I would love to come back and try their cocktail experience, as it reminds me of Aviary, but I would skip their dining...