admin Of the many radical reinventions that have made Eleven Madison Park an object of fascination for food lovers around the world, one of Daniel Humm’s earliest controversies happened just after he started the job. “People were revolting,” the 46-year-old remembers with one of those rare, downturned smiles reserved for nostalgia. Though the so-called “French fry incident,” like many of the others, was certainly not as funny at the time.
The restaurant originally opened in 1998 as a classic New York brasserie in the former storage space of the art deco Metropolitan Life North Building on the southwest edge of Madison Square Park. When owner Danny Meyer, the hospitality mogul responsible for the likes of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Shake Shack, poached Humm from San Francisco’s Campton Place a near-decade later, the young Swiss chef had a different direction for Eleven Madison Park in mind—and a new menu to boot. Eighty-sixing the fries, which were crisped so much they left a painterly trail of oil across their paper cone container, was Humm’s first executive decision. “People sent letters to Danny saying, ‘This restaurant is going to close, you’ll never make it,’’ he says. “I didn’t actually want to get rid of them, but there was no room for French fries for where I wanted to go.”
A quarter of a century later, Humm has finally gotten there. Seated on a velvety French blue banquette in the lavish dining room of the Eleven Madison Park he always knew it could be—the restaurant he joined as chef de cuisine in 2006, that he purchased from his boss-slash-mentor in 2011 with Will Guidara, the business partner whom, to much surprise, he then bought out eight years later—today he is happy, proud even, if he lets himself admit it.
Humm spent the first two decades of his life training to become a pro cyclist, and still maintains the rigor of an athlete striving for perfection, of which he’s come near-close. Now the sole proprietor of the restaurant, Humm is more than just a chef who moved from the line to the back office. He is the lifeblood of the Eleven Madison Park brand, and his progressive menu has set the standard for American fine dining again and again: first as a choose-your-own-adventure style pre-fixe with an inventive take on haute cuisine—his honey lavender duck has become a topic of fierce debate among imitators on Reddit, as has his pig bladders-braised celery root—and now, notably, as entirely plant-based. All this has earned Humm 11 James Beard Foundation Awards, three Michelin stars, the coveted top spot on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, and more—plus loyal patronage from the likes of Billie Eilish, Angelina Jolie, and Gabriela Hearst. The chef has also launched Eleven Madison Home, co-founded the food equity non-profit Rethink Food with his former Chef de Partie Matt Jozwiak, and authored a handful of books.
