Daniel Humm’s New Eleven Madison Park Menu Will Be Meat-Free

Whereas the dish seems easy, its preparation is nearly absurdly complicated, requiring a 16-hour course of with greater than a dozen distinct steps—together with making ready a roasted herb and lettuce sauce, herb garland and a clay vase that’s cracked open as a part of the presentation. 

For a very long time, EMP and its chef and proprietor, Daniel Humm, 44, have been described with superlatives: World’s Finest Restaurant; three Michelin stars; 4 New York Occasions stars. However now the restaurant is making a transfer that may seemingly guarantee its place within the historical past of meals. Like most fine-dining cooks, Humm is greatest recognized for meat and seafood dishes: his legendary duck, roasted with honey and lavender; lobster poached in mushroom butter; smoked-sturgeon cheesecake with caviar. When it reopens on June 10, EMP will cease serving meat or seafood of any type and make its dishes completely from vegetation—from greens, fruits and fungi. (At present, there is just one three-Michelin-star restaurant that serves no meat or seafood: King’s Pleasure in Beijing.) EMP is not going to depend as totally vegan as a result of Humm will enable milk and honey for espresso and tea; Humm struggled a bit with this determination, concluding that he didn’t need to deprive friends of pleasures however to thrill them with the potential of plant-based delicacies. (This yr’s Michelin stars for New York–based mostly eating places can be revealed later this week, so they’ll mirror the previous EMP menu. In roughly one yr, Humm will study if his meat-free menu retains this honor.)

“After we set out on this journey we promised ourselves that we might solely do that if the meal could possibly be as scrumptious because it was earlier than,” Humm says. “My aim is to create these lovely dishes, give individuals lovely experiences; sudden, shocking experiences that make you’re feeling glad, as a meal with meat would.”

Like almost everybody who works in his kitchen and just about all of his pals, I used to be skeptical when Humm first informed me about his plan. Plant-based meals? I pictured large, joyless plates of greens that bodily fill your abdomen however by no means go away you feeling satiated. Or I imagined some invention from a lab that someway transforms vegetable protein right into a simulacrum of animal muscle. Burger King not too long ago launched a vegan “hen” sandwich within the U.Okay. Past Burger’s new model 3.0 of its almost indistinguishable meat substitute is offered in grocery shops this week. Epicurious, one of many main digital meals websites, not too long ago introduced it might now not share new recipes that embody beef. So, positive, plant-based meals is more and more necessary in mass meals industries. However in fantastic eating? Is anyone going to be glad paying that form of cash (EMP’s tasting menu, together with tip, is $335 per individual) for a dinner of greens? Will that meal be magical? Fortunately memorable? I’ve now tasted a number of of the dishes and the reply—at the very least for me—is: “Oh, my God, sure!” 

There’s the beet dish, after all. Then there’s the rice porridge with celtuce (a weirdly underused and magical thick-stemmed lettuce), which balances a lightweight brightness with a creamy mouthfeel. And my favourite, to date: the amaranth seed and candy peas served with a creamy fermented almond cream and pea-miso purée. The second I tasted it, I laughed, turned to Humm and stated, “That is going to work.”

Roughly one yr earlier than I tasted that dish, Humm was close to his lowest level. Like all of us—and particularly everybody within the restaurant business—Humm was devastated by the pandemic. “We had been working out of money, and it wasn’t clear if there was going to be an Eleven Madison Park,” he informed me. “That is my life’s work. That kitchen is every part to me. So the concept it might finish was actually scary.” He had purchased out his longtime enterprise associate, Will Guidara, almost a yr earlier than the pandemic and bore the burden alone. For a lot of the primary few months of the pandemic, Humm’s life was divided into two. He was desperately attempting to maintain the restaurant from chapter (which he did, he says, by way of his landlord’s beneficiant understanding). And he was throwing himself and his kitchen into a brand new undertaking: feeding first responders and the neediest individuals in New York.

“I discovered myself with a kitchen that’s now empty,” he recollects. He additionally had some cooks who had no different work. Humm has turn out to be shut with most of the farmers who provide EMP—most of whom are inside two or three hours of the town. He has gotten to know them by way of in depth discussions concerning the sorts and high quality of produce he’s searching for. They had been telling him “that they’re sitting on a lot meals that’s getting spoiled they usually need to throw it away,” he says. “So, I made a decision to show Eleven Madison Park right into a group kitchen to provide meals for individuals in want.”

Humm had already co-founded Rethink Meals with Matt Jozwiak, a former chef in his kitchen. The group works with eating places to rework meals waste into meals for needy individuals. When the pandemic pressured EMP to close down, Humm wished to assist the town and in addition maintain as a lot of his group employed as potential. So, he saved a dozen cooks on employees, making ready and delivering meals to first responders at Elmhurst Hospital Middle, in Queens, New York, when it was the epicenter of the worldwide pandemic. Later the group delivered meals to hungry individuals all through the town. “We had been strolling meals to individuals’s residences and simply attending to expertise New York in an entire completely different manner,” Humm says. Humm, who’s from Switzerland, has lived in New York since 2006. “We noticed how powerful it’s on the market, however we additionally noticed what number of angels there are. I met some superb individuals in these communities. I really feel like I’m rather more of a New Yorker in the present day than I ever have been. I’m so in love with the town and so dedicated to it.”

Maybe essentially the most iconic picture from EMP’s kitchen is the big, glass fridge displaying rows of hanging duck, essentially the most celebrated dish on the menu. Within the pandemic, boxed meals for the needy changed the duck. By the top of final summer season, the worst of his monetary fears had been resolved, and Humm started to consider what it is perhaps prefer to reopen the restaurant sooner or later. After his experiences with Rethink, he says, he realized, “We have now to alter the mannequin of what our restaurant is; our complete enterprise mannequin has to alter.” Humm determined to make Rethink a core funds merchandise—like flatware or produce. The price of each meal served will incorporate the price of producing further meals for hungry New Yorkers. He first did this with a pickup service his group created in October, Eleven Madison Dwelling. When the restaurant reopens, every tasting menu will cowl the price of 5 meals and be delivered by Eleven Madison Truck, run by the identical group that’s cooking the high-priced meals. “Everybody who touches EMP—the employees, the friends, the purveyors—will assist feed the town,” Humm says.

Luxurious eating is commonly a sanctuary the place the rich can indulge themselves with out reminders of a troubled world. EMP has at all times tweaked this mannequin. It by no means had a stuffy gown code; its service—whereas famously impeccable—is extra informal and pleasant than the everyday European mannequin of waiter as supercilious servant.

Now Humm was confronted with a set of objectives that appear to contradict one another. He wished a restaurant that supplied friends an expertise that was as elegant and scrumptious and as magical as potential. However he additionally wished to embrace all of New York, together with the poorest and most needy. And, he started to comprehend, he wished to embed his moral commitments within the meals itself. “Our practices of animal manufacturing, what we’re doing to the oceans, the quantity we eat: It isn’t sustainable,” he says. “If Eleven Madison Park is actually on the forefront of eating and culinary innovation, to me it’s crystal clear that that is the one place to go subsequent.” How might he make an moral meal that didn’t really feel joyless, like a stern lecture on a plate? He didn’t need to pressure anyone to desert meat. Humm says he eats meat himself (although lower than he used to), and his different restaurant, Davies and Brook in London, will proceed to serve seafood and meat, as will EMP’s personal eating service. 

“This can be a large deal,” says Michael Pollan, creator of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, after I clarify Humm’s embrace of a meat-free menu. Pollan says {that a} essential problem within the combat in opposition to local weather change is to indicate those who “one of many greatest components of any particular person’s carbon footprint is their meat consuming.” Many research present that meat—and, particularly, beef—manufacturing is a serious contributor to environmental harm.

But explaining to those who consuming meat is detrimental to the setting hardly ever works. “Individuals aren’t going to make sacrifices of their consuming,” Pollan says. “Pleasure will nonetheless drive issues. The problem is then to display the pleasure that may be had in not consuming meat. There’s so many individuals that assume that it’s not a meal if there isn’t meat in it.” Having a chef with Humm’s world affect put together dishes which are on the peak of culinary greatness and in addition meat-free will assist present the “profound pleasure available in consuming greens and grains,” Pollan says. “It can legitimize a manner of consuming that’s nonetheless considerably fringe—however rising.”

As soon as Humm had the thought of a meat-free menu, he and his group started their experimentation. He quickly discovered himself in essentially the most artistic interval of his lengthy cooking profession. “With meat, there are solely two or three issues you are able to do,” he says. “If in case you have lovely carrots, the alternatives for creativity are limitless.” Humm considered one thing he had lengthy famous: When cooks exit to eat, they research the way in which a cook dinner prepares the greens to see if they’re true masters. In truth, Humm notes, whereas the uncooked supplies in a meat-free meal are cheaper, there’s a lot extra labor concerned in making ready them that there isn’t a price financial savings. He has determined to open for under 5 evenings every week—forgoing lunch for the primary few months again—as a result of the kitchen wants time to accommodate the numerous new preparations. Humm has additionally begun a partnership together with his previous buddy Maciek Kobielski to create a farm in upstate New York. Kobielski, a trend photographer (and frequent WSJ. Journal contributor, who shot the pictures for this story), spent most of final yr making ready what is going to quickly be considered one of EMP’s major suppliers of recent produce. 

That is Humm’s problem: Can he serve a meat-free, plant-based meal that stands as one of many nice eating experiences on the planet? Can he nudge his prospects—and the remainder of the world—to search out luxurious, shock and enjoyment of a plate of greens? EMP has nearly by no means had an empty desk in its 15 years below Humm. He says that he will get scared generally, frightened that individuals received’t come anymore. However then he spends time within the kitchen, he shares a few of the new dishes, and he thinks, “This might change the world.”