From February 27 to March 7, 2026, the Montréal En Lumière festival will be held in downtown Montréal for its 27th edition. This year’s program includes arts, music, gastronomy, outdoor activities for families (or dates) , and the famous Nuit Blanche de Montréal.
As part of the festival, chef Jason Morris of Marcus restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel Montreal welcomed chef Mads Refslund of ILIS restaurant for two evenings of a special menu to be enjoyed at the counter, facing Marcus’ open kitchen. I was lucky enough to be able to go and eat land and sea dishes created by these two exceptional chefs.
A little salt water to melt Montreal
From my seat, I have a clear view of the kitchen at Marcus restaurant—which is listed in the 2025 Michelin Guide—on the third floor of the Four Seasons Hotel Montreal. Between the counters and stainless steel ovens, about fifteen chefs and cooks work without fuss. They wear white short-sleeved shirts, black or blue aprons, and—to my delight—I even see a backwards cap. Being so close to the kitchen, almost inside it, feels like something secret and indecent.
Amidst the serious hustle and bustle, guest chef Mads Refslund and chef Jason Morris oversee the complicated and semi-miraculous preparations of the first of seven courses on tonight’s menu.
Chef Mads—as his media manager introduced him to me—is originally from Copenhagen, one of the founding members of the cult restaurant Noma, and obsessed with local, fresh, and seasonal ingredients. His Brooklyn restaurant, ILIS, is listed in the 2025 Michelin Guide and known for its menu based on the seasons, seafood, and plants.
The seven-course menu is a bit like drinking from a cup on an island untouched by big-city pollution. For me, who is not a foodie but has spent every summer by the water, it’s intensely nostalgic and a bit miraculous. A bit like Proust’s proverbial madeleine.
Served as a last-minute decision after a shipment of local shellfish arrived, a raw scallop with a small bag of seaweed filled with salt water to squeeze between your fingers to sprinkle on the shellfish. I think of swimming in cold water. Returning to the present moment, I watch the chefs squeeze pipettes of green oil into large, shiny oysters. A swallow, an anemone, an arrow, a large snake, the words ” I can’t decide.”
This was followed by oysters, served warm with egg flan and the taste of sun-heated grass, charcoal-grilled cabbage, and Chef Mads’ specialty—a sweet potato in a seed crust with caviar.
The duck and hibiscus flower remindedme of fresh, wet earth where the first blades of spring grass are growing, and the abalone served with king mushrooms on a square of mycelium transformed into a plate reminded me of earthworms and snails on stone walls in the early morning.
Chefs talk about improvisation as the “nature of cooking.” Faced with a carrot and sorrel granita on a bed of yogurt, I think of the nature of cooking as an extrapolation of Nature with a capital N. The wind, the tide, the rain, the mycelium.
At the end of the meal, Chef Jason handed me the abalone shell, pearly and almost too delicate to have contained the juicy, still-wet sea snail. We’re going to take this little piece of the sea home with us. The shell reflects the sun’s rays in my apartment this morning, placed near my bedroom window.
Thank you!