Celebrated fine-dining restaurant Eleven Madison Park is making a bold and sweeping change to its menu: upon its in-person reopening on June 10, it will offer a completely meat free lineup.
Chef-owner Daniel Humm confirmed today that the three Michelin-star restaurant will swap its most iconic dishes for an eight to ten-course menu “consisting of entirely plant-based dishes.” The only ingredients keeping the restaurant from being fully vegan are milk and honey, which will continue to be available for coffee and tea. More details about the menu are yet to come, but Eater reports it will cost $335 per customer, including gratuity.
“When we set out on this journey we promised ourselves that we would only do this if the meal could be as delicious as it was before,” Humm said in an interview with the WSJ Magazine. “My goal is to create these beautiful dishes, give people beautiful experiences; unexpected, surprising experiences that make you feel satisfied, as a meal with meat would.”
Early last year Humm described himself as being 90 percent vegetarian, and during the pandemic became convinced that it was necessary to make this change, for the future. “The way we have sourced our food, the way we’re consuming our food, the way we eat meat, it is not sustainable. And that is not an opinion. It is just a fact,” Humm explained on NPR.
With seemingly the entire food world abuzz over the news today, we caught up with local Hell’s Kitchen plant-based pioneer April Tam Smith of PS Kitchen to glean her thoughts. “Plant-based eating is growing in leaps and bounds,” she said. “There are countless reasons to eat plant-based: environmental causes, animal causes, and human rights causes — the more restaurants we see offering vegan food, the better a place the world becomes, one delicious meal at a time!”
