The Discovery menu at Mystic is an ardent study of the Maritimes, held within the immediacy of a moment. Limited in seats each night, the exclusive offering borne out of weekly market runs by sous chef Cam Benns. Each dish pays singular attention to an ingredient.

Chef Malcolm Campbell first encountered wolf eel after moving to Halifax. Not a true eel but part of the wolffish family, it has the firmness of cod and the kind of gnarled teeth that explain its name.

One summer evening, after a tartare of Nova Scotia diver scallop in a rousing sea buckthorn aguachile, a wolf eel made its entrance. A gleaming roulade with a fine edge of burnt umber, it sat within a surreal landscape of coral-like tuiles, curling green shoots, beach peas, and asparagus tips—an arrangement caught between the wild and the composed, evocative of tidepools and garden beds both.

In line with the wolf eel’s natural diet, Campbell paired it with scallops and crab. The fish, while compressed into form, remained supple and responsive to the fork. The flavour was soft, sweet and oceanic. A crab hollandaise, pale orange and smooth as silk, pooled lusciously around.

The dish is multitudes at once—rustic and ritzy, delicate and still satisfying. Far from contrary or aloof, it occupies the same beguilingly liminal space as the restaurant itself.