El Chato × ILIS: When Bogotá Meets Brooklyn
By NOS.3 Editorial Team
In a striking Greenpoint warehouse where shadows dance on polished concrete and smoke curls from open flames, ILIS will host one of the most anticipated culinary collaborations of the season.
On December 9, 2025, Bogotá’s Álvaro Clavijo, chef and founder of El Chato, ranked #54 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants and #3 in Latin America’s 50 Best will join forces with Mads Refslund, the Danish chef behind ILIS and a co-founder of Noma, for a one-night-only dinner that bridges two distinct worlds through a shared language of nature, fire, and flavor.
A Shared Curiosity for Ingredients
The collaboration is part of ILIS’s Chef Dinner Series, an ongoing project that brings together culinary innovators from around the globe. Refslund, known for his “eco-chic” Nordic approach that celebrates raw textures and elemental cooking, has designed ILIS as an open stage for ingredient-driven creativity. For this dinner, Clavijo will bring the bold Colombian sensibility that defines El Chato, focused on biodiversity, technique, and origin, while blending it seamlessly with Refslund’s Nordic purity.
“It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” Clavijo told us. “Mads is incredible, and after several attempts to align schedules, it finally worked. The idea is to create a menu where both kitchens speak the same language through different ingredients: Colombian roots, New York markets, Nordic spirit.”
One Table, Two Worlds
Guests can expect a multi-course tasting menu that moves between the flora and fauna of two continents, products from Colombian soil meeting the seasonal bounty of the U.S. Northeast. Think lobster and duck beside guava or corn; local mushrooms alongside black garlic and tropical herbs. The dinner promises not just a contrast of geographies but an exploration of craftsmanship, where every dish becomes a dialogue between two chefs who share an obsession with quality and storytelling.
A Singular Night at ILIS
ILIS, located at 150 Green Street in Brooklyn, is known for turning dining into an immersive ritual. The December 9th event — priced at $345 per guest, with curated wine or non-alcoholic pairings — will seat solo diners at the bar and invite small groups into its dimly lit main room. True to the restaurant’s philosophy, there will be no substitutions or dietary accommodations: the evening is meant to be experienced as a whole, an unfiltered meeting of minds and ingredients.
For Clavijo, the dinner represents a continuation of conversations about sustainability, identity, and how Latin American cuisine resonates on the global stage. “We’ll take a piece of Colombia to Brooklyn,” he says, “and hopefully bring Mads to Bogotá next.”
Reservations are now open via Resy.
