Eleven Madison Park's Radical Plant-Forward Reinvention
How Daniel Humm built the future of fine dining
Thomas Løvaslokøy & Øyvind
Aurevia Escapes
28 February 2025
11 min read
When New York's most celebrated restaurant went entirely plant-based in 2021, critics were sceptical. Four years on, we revisit a tasting menu that has quietly become the most influential meal in America.
Daniel Humm's dining room on Madison Square Park has the proportions of a cathedral and the hush of a library. The service is so refined as to be invisible — you realise only later, recounting the meal, how precisely every need was anticipated.
A Menu Without Compromise
The current menu opens with a mushroom broth of startling depth — a reminder that umami is not the exclusive province of meat. A course of black truffle and celeriac arrives next, shaved tableside from a whole truffle the size of a tennis ball. The effect is theatrical; the flavour is transcendent.
“Humm has proved that restraint, applied with enough intelligence, is its own form of abundance.”
The Wine Programme
Wine director Ariel Arce has assembled a 3,000-label cellar weighted toward Burgundy and the Jura. The sommelier pairing at $225 is exceptional value at this level; ask for the non-alcoholic pairing if you want to understand how good fermented beverages can be without a drop of alcohol.
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