Daniel Humm’s Giant, Thought-Provoking, Plant-Based Pivot | The Slowdown - Culture, Nature, Future
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Daniel Humm. (Photo: Craic McDean)
Daniel Humm. (Photo: Craic McDean)

In the summer of 2021, just over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, chef Daniel Humm took a giant, thought-provoking (and, as he would in time convincingly argue, absolutely vital) leap at his three-starred Michelin restaurant, Eleven Madison Park. Long known for its meat and fish staples—sliced sturgeon; a tabletop clambake; beef tartare with caviar and smoked bone marrow; and its former signature dish, duck with daikon and plum—the restaurant pivoted to an entirely vegan menu, both as a response to an increasingly dire climate reality and also as a way of redefining fine dining for our precarious present. (That fall, Humm spoke about this radical transformation on our Time Sensitive podcast.) Within months, food and restaurant critics came with their meat knives out, most notably The New York Times’s Pete Wells, who, in a particularly cranky review, wrote of a beet dish that it “tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.” While there were certainly menu kinks to work out early on, Eleven Madison Park’s shift was undoubtedly an impressive feat. Within a year or so, Humm and his team proved their plant-based prowess in the kitchen. Last fall, Eleven Madison Park was named the first vegan three-starred Michelin restaurant in the world—a catalytic moment for Humm, for fine dining, and for what he hopes will be our plant-based future. Over the past two years, the menu has evolved into a rich, fully formed, rigorously executed cuisine that shows that plants can be just as, if not more, versatile, interesting, and delicious as meat and fish.

Here, Humm talks about the recent Michelin honor, his collaborative farming operation upstate, and his admiration for three contemporaries in food and fashion: the chefs Alice Waters and Dan Barber and the fashion designer Gabriela Hearst.

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Let’s start with Eleven Madison Park becoming the first vegan restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars. How does it feel to receive this honor?

I’m extremely happy. The news was so important for us, more than I even thought. Breaking away from the norm, I was aware that we might not get the buy-in of traditional institutions like people who review and rank restaurants, and I was okay with that. I was well aware that we might not be awarded in the same way as we were before.

Growing up in Europe, and always having Michelin as part of my cooking life, was always so meaningful. Funnily enough, we actually had three stars for exactly eleven years, and eleven has been an important number in my life—obviously, with Eleven Madison Park, but it was actually 11/11/11 when we first received the three stars. So now, eleven years later, to receive the three stars as a fully vegan restaurant was really meaningful. But when you go against the norm—against the system—you’re gonna lose some people’s support. But then there’s also some support that you need. You need the validation. This move was a controversial one. It’s been a mixed bag of people buying in and people not buying in.

Michelin wrote the rules on what a fine-dining restaurant is. It’s been over a hundred years that they’ve been reviewing restaurants. For them to make this step, it’s really powerful. I believe it will change fine dining forever.

Can you share some of the details about what it was like to make this change? Because it wasn’t easy, as you said. There were lots of challenges: the naysayers, the pushback from old clientele, the catty reviews. I mean, it’s hard being at the top.

Yeah, it was challenging. I felt so strongly in my heart that the future of food is plant-based. You don’t need to dig that deep to realize that. I happen to have this platform of Eleven Madison Park, and we also have the creativity. Our thing is creativity with food. So I think creativity should be applied towards a plant-based future.

When I reopened the restaurant, [in the summer of 2021], I didn’t think I should think about creating yet another version of a butter-poached lobster, or of a caviar preparation, or of our lavender-roasted duck. It was clear to me that we should use our creativity towards this, and it came purely from a very creative place. It seemed exciting to create something entirely new. At the beginning, it felt like, Oh, we would leave all this knowledge behind. We spent years perfecting these things, and now, these recipes are worthless to us. But in fact, we realized from where we are today that [the change] has been only expansive and liberating.

We were held back before, because there’s a certain expectation when you go to a fine-dining restaurant. You kind of already know what the meal is going to be like. So when I look back, I almost think our cooking was just creating these condiments—like the condiments for the lobster, the condiments for the duck, the condiments for the caviar. Today, we’re entirely free. You have no idea when you come to Eleven Madison Park what’s going to be your main course, what’s going to be your starter. And isn’t that what’s magical? When you get to have an experience that you can’t have anywhere else and you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get.

There’s also the aspect of: This isn’t about me; this is about the restaurant. This is about an entire team. To motivate the team, and for the team to be driven, is everything. We know that by receiving three Michelin stars, for a vegan cuisine, it’s a historic moment in food.

The “Grilled Squash” dish at Eleven Madison Park. (Courtesy Eleven Madison Park)
The “Grilled Squash” dish at Eleven Madison Park. (Courtesy Eleven Madison Park)

Tell me a little bit about your personal relationship with plants and plant-based eating. Take me back to your childhood, to your time as a young chef, how you’ve seen the role of plants in your cooking evolve over time. This didn’t just happen overnight. This was a long, circuitous evolution.

I grew up in Switzerland, in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where my mom would bring the ingredients directly from the farm. Vegetables were always the star of the show. There was one meal a week where there was a whole chicken or roast or a leg of lamb, but most of our diet was around plants.

I also used to ride bicycles competitively. Food as something for your body—as fuel for your body and something that’s healthy for you—was always top of my mind. Eating plants always felt better than anything else. It always felt like real fuel, because you’re eating something that’s alive. It energizes you. There’s an energy you get from it.

In my cooking, I always felt there was one cookbook. It was the Michel Bras cookbook [Essential Cuisine] that came out in ’98. [Editor’s note: The book was released in 2002, not 1998.] That changed part of my life as a chef, for sure. On the cover of that book was a salad of, like, thirty different vegetables. This was in the height of French gastronomy. When I saw the cover of that book, I was just so excited. I was blown away. I became a student of Michel Bras’s cuisine. He had a fine-dining restaurant [Maison Bras]. You would get one course. You would get this really special onion that’s been roasted in this wood fire. An onion dish at a fancy restaurant was mind-blowing to me.

I was always drawn toward this. I knew that creativity was always shown most when working with vegetables, because there are just so many opportunities [in terms of] how to go about it. When you have a piece of fish or a piece of meat, you’re pretty limited in what you can do with it. You can execute it really well, but in terms of creativity, you’re kind of limited. I was always drawn to my contemporaries’ or my mentors’ work with vegetables.

The “Sunflower” dish at Eleven Madison Park. (Courtesy Eleven Madison Park)
The “Sunflower” dish at Eleven Madison Park. (Courtesy Eleven Madison Park)

Give me a few examples of some of these vegetables or plants that you’ve gotten to play with so far. I mean, there’s been some extraordinary things I’ve had the pleasure of tasting, like the sunflower dish.

What’s been amazing is we started our own farm. That’s something I got so lucky with, because a very close friend of mine [Maciek Kobielski]—he’s a fashion photographer—he moved upstate, and he had all this land, and he started growing vegetables during the pandemic, just for his family. That’s when I became pretty certain that I [would] open the restaurant as fully plant-based. He got so excited about growing vegetables that we decided together that we would create this farm to grow all of the vegetables for our restaurant. He has just been so incredible and reliable and driven. This has become a huge benefit to the restaurant.

We’re now in the fall, thinking about next summer, what to grow and what to plant. [Editor’s note: This interview was recorded in the fall of 2022]. To have that ability to plan this far out, in some ways, it’s a responsibility and it’s a little scary. But then when you get used to it a little bit, it becomes a superpower. So, for example, this last summer, we were growing the sunflowers, and when you harvest the sunflowers, right before they open up to blossom, they’re kind of like little artichokes, and you can kind of cook them similarly to artichokes, but you’re eating sunflowers.

We’re growing this Chinese lettuce called celtuce. The juice is so delicious and smells like jasmine rice. The ability to introduce people to things that they haven’t had before is cool. We’re also, of course, now able to compost. There’s this virtuous cycle of things coming to our restaurant, the leftovers’ waste going back to the farm. Which is also really important to us: to create this kind of cycle.

You’ve previously mentioned to me the influence Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has had on you. I was wondering if there have been other beacons for you as you’ve headed in your new direction, whether in food, fashion, or other fields—thinkers who have sort of shown you the way, so to speak?

It’s really the people who use their language for something greater than just their art. When I look back at the culinary landscape and people who will be remembered, Alice Waters is very much on top of that list. She has, of course, this wonderful restaurant, Chez Panisse. But then all of the work she has done around school lunches and education about food—Edible Schoolyard—it’s tremendous. I also respect Dan Barber [the guest on Ep. 62 of our Time Sensitive podcast] a lot. He has Blue Hill at Stone Barns, which is also really pushing the envelope on farming and the seeds that we’re using—the heirloom kinds, rather than monocrops. I think there’s so much work to be done there, and he’s really leading that.

There are other people in other fields. My close friend Gabriela Hearst [the guest on Ep. 32 of Time Sensitive]—what she’s doing in fashion is incredible, really rethinking what that can be. In some ways, there’s a similarity between a fashion designer and a chef, because a fashion designer has all of these collections that come out on a regular schedule—it’s sort of like our seasons—and there’s a deadline. There’s a collection, and usually, there’s a little bit of a theme to it. In terms of luxury, as well, [fashion designers and chefs both ask], What is luxury? I think luxury comes with a responsibility, this privilege. We do have to shine a light to make a difference. I think it’s crucial.

The “Tomato” dish at Eleven Madison Park. (Courtesy Eleven Madison Park)
The “Tomato” dish at Eleven Madison Park. (Courtesy Eleven Madison Park)

I was hoping you might speak here a little bit to how you view the top-down impact of what you’re doing. That’s the responsibility of luxury you were just alluding to. Do you think there could be, or will be, a trickle-down effect to the notoriety of your plant-based pivot? And do you think that this new direction could also impact how people think about food systems?

Yeah. During the pandemic, I definitely thought about the impact that Tesla has made versus the impact that Toyota Prius made. Toyota Prius was the first hybrid car, like thirty years ago, which is groundbreaking on its own and really inspiring. But it didn’t really make the difference like Tesla did. I think Tesla made that impact because it was about making a great car. It’s about a contemporary car that, of course, is electric. For me, Eleven Madison Park is sort of like a contemporary restaurant. I think I would say that people who are driving a Toyota Prius, they drove it because it was a hybrid car. I think the person who’s driving Tesla is driving it because they love that car. My hope is that people come to Eleven Madison Park because they just love that restaurant. Therefore, if we can make it magical and beautiful and luxurious, without that big message of being plant-based…. The message should be: “It’s just really delicious.”

On a personal level, have you noticed changes to your own health and diet as a result of the switch? Have you, by cooking plant-based, changed your own diet?

Definitely. As I said before, it came from a creative place at first. My diet has always been plant-forward. I’ve never been a “meat person.” But I have had meat as part of my diet. Today, when I go to someone’s house, and that’s what they cook, I will still enjoy having this meal. But on my own, I have adopted a vegan diet, because it just feels better. You have more energy; you sleep better.

To close, what to you, Daniel, is the good life?

The good life, to me, is always choosing joy over fear. I had this conversation with a friend the other day. Every day or two, everything that comes up in your life, there’s really only two decisions you can make: You can choose approaching it with joy, or you can choose approaching it with fear. These are the two choices you have. They really can’t live together. I think approaching everything with joy is the good life to me. There’s no other choice. Just joy.

This interview was recorded in The Slowdown’s New York City studio on October 31, 2022. The transcript has been slightly condensed and edited for clarity.

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Swedish home furnishings giant Ikea has made very clear its grand ambition to become an entirely circular business by 20The Scraps Book: A Waste-Less Cookbook, dedicated to making meals out of the food fragments that we typically leave behind, adds to the effort. There are plenestimates that 30 to 40 percent of the country’s food supply, or about a pound of food per person each day, gets thrown out.

A pitcher of water with a hand holding a honey wand overhead.

For her thirtieth birthday, some years ago, Antwerp-based food journalist and chef Barbara Serulus received a living, liFizz: The Beginner’s Guide to Making Natural, Non-Alcoholic Fermented Drinks (BIS Publishers). Illustrated with artwork by chef Elise van Iterson, it’s a thoroughly readable guide to fermentation,

A carving board with vegan burgers and bacon, onions, a cleaver, herbs, and condiments.

Not eating meat is no longer a concern reserved for vegetarians and vegans. The damaging effects the factory-farm industthe third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world). In turn, the meat-free market is booming. In the United Kingdom, sales of plant-based foods is expected to exceed £1.Rudy’s Vegan Butcher, which opened five months ago in the London borough of Islington, only further suggests that the end of meat is near.

Four Valke Vleug wine bottles in a carton.

Puurs, Belgium, isn’t exactly known as an oenophile mecca—yet. That may change now that Valke Vleug, a year-old boutique winery created by former real estate developer Jan Van Lancker and Belgian architect Vincent Van Dsign up for its newsletter, which will announce the wines’ launch date soon.)

Several stacks of bhar on a tray next to paper cups.

Single-use plastics are the epitome of throwaway culture, centered around convenience and profit at the expense of the eAccording to the NRDC, approximately half of the 300 million tons of plastic produced annually worldwide—nearly equivalent to the weight of t

A cake of dried pu-erh with a colorful tag.

During China’s Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220 C.E.), pu-erh tea was transported along the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, an age-old trading route that once extended 1,400 miles from ChinaCamellia sinensis var. assamica in mountains of the Chinese Yunnan Province—that are roasted, rolled, and dried in the sun. They’re then fermented in osheng pu-erh ferments naturally and matures over many years like a fine wine, while the ripe and earthy shou pu-erh is incubated in a moisture-rich environment that accelerates the aging process, which concludes within a few months. Typ

Jon Gray in an black t-shirt and zip-up smock on a white brick background.

Jon Gray, along with chefs Pierre Serrao and Lester Walker, form the Bronx-based culinary collective Ghetto Gastro, whose work celebrates their native borough while seeking to elevate its stature within global culture through immersivEp. 2 of our Time Sensitive podcast, recorded in early 2019.) Through imaginative storytelling, experiential activations, and product development for clien

A green bottle of brut with a small tag around its neck reading "obrigado!"

Even if you’re not a sommelier or a wino, there are enough champagne memes these days for you to know that the bubbly faD.M. Brut, a sparkling wine that’s made in the Champagne method—which is to say, fermented in the bottle itself—but with a “BraziObrigado!, making for an apt gift. Sure, Dom Maria’s sparkling wine may not be champagne proper, but we’d happily raise a glass asaúde to a round of this.

A hand pulling a steaming margherita pizza out of a green Roccbox oven.

Among the sundry forms of comfort we’ve sought during the pandemic, perhaps nothing soothes faster than a piping-hot pizRoccbox can cook a perfectly-crispy-crust Neapolitan pie in just 60 seconds, with its up-to-950-degree oven and cordierite stonRoccbox Wood Burner 2.0, a detachable device that adds oomph to its signature oven, with its ability to reach top temperatures even faster, andOoni Pro, which can be heated with charcoal, wood, or gas, and Camp Chef’s double-walled Italia Artisan Pizza Oven, built to mimic the performance of the wood-fired brick variety (it can also be used to bake bread or roast meats). How

Four yellow and orange bottles of Unified Ferments teas on a white background.

In the United States, the market for fermented tea drinks, including the popular kombucha variety, reached $2.2 billion at the end of last year, and is expected to jump to $6.5 billion by 2026. But all such beverages are not created equal, as exemplified by BrookUnified Ferments, which concocts refreshments that offer a distinctive, and complex yet subtle drinking experience. “Most kombucha is ma

A white Modern Milk milk press and glass of milk on a black background.

From nuts to oats to rice to hemp seeds to soy, you can find all sorts of alternatives to traditional dairy these days. requires incredible amounts of water consumption to produce). Ditch the supermarket variety of alt-milks, which are often packed with stabilizers and emulsifiers, and make a fresh

A cup of Rasa Elderberry Boost with cloves of cinammon, ginger, and anise on a bright wood table.

Despite coffee’s side effects, which can include pit-in-your-stomach anxiety and sleepless nights, caffeine addicts haveaccording to the National Coffee Association, only seems to be growing. But coffee’s not the only way to add some pep to your step. There are a number of tasty alteMud\Wtr, a blend of familiar ingredients (masala chai, turmeric, sea salt, lion’s mane mushrooms, and others) that impart a comDandy Blend actually tastes like a coffee-and-hot chocolate mashup, which is surprising, given that it’s made from dandelion, chicoRasa, a company based in Boulder, Colorado, that offers multiple blends that promote immunity, lower stress levels, and incr

A Kokoro Care Package open to show its contents on a patterned white and red background.

If journeying to Japan feels out of reach—or even impossible, in the midst of a pandemic—fret not. The subscription box Kokoro Care Packages brings the best of the country to you via monthly, quarterly, or one-off parcels, delivered year-round. Noodles, soups,

A simple, rectangular binchotan grill on a white background.

Summer may have passed, but after the year we’ve had, and the months of isolation yet ahead, maintaining a sense of warmKaginushi charcoal BBQ konro grill. Designed in a variety of sizes, including some large enough to cook a whole fish on, the pared-down appliance sits on binchō-tan charcoal around the ignition device inside, and switch it on to get grilling. It’s not quite the great outdoors, but th

Four sake bottles on a white background.

In 1989, friends Deborah Fleig and Linda Tetrault started running the store at Ten Thousand Waves, a spa-centric sanctuaFloating World Artisan Sake Imports to bring Japan’s finest brews stateside. Their knowledge shines through the company’s wide-ranging website catalogue, Akishika Okarakuchi variety, made by just five people at a tiny, 134-year-old establishment nestled in the mountains between Kyoto and OsakMukai, a label run by one of the few female tōji (master brewers) working in the industry today. Libations for more adventurous palettes include Kaze no Mori (“Wind of the Woods”), a floral, fruity, unfiltered sake with a cult following, and a dry, earthy sake from Mutemuka, a brewery in Kochi Prefecture, that’s aged for six months and has a distinctively nutty aftertaste that smacks of cacalist of distributors before holing up for the holidays.

Chef Bill Granger smiling in a sunny room.

Since opening his first restaurant, Bills, in Sydney in 1993, few people have done more for the global understanding of Bill Granger, commonly (though, he’ll politely say, not necessarily correctly) known as the man who gave the world avocado toast. NoAustralian Food (Murdoch Books), a delicious collection of wholesome recipes including one-bowl meals, chopped salads, and fish dishes. We recently spok Over the last twenty years, you’ve authored ten books—none of which squarely tackle the topic of Australian food. What

A hand in a blue plastic glove holds a purple knife above a pink, purple, and red jelly cake atop a pink platter.

As the holidays roll around, gelatin desserts—a festive Thanksgiving staple, cast in extravagant shapes and fantastical Nünchi. Shapes such as five-petaled flowers recur in Park’s delicate, decidedly cute confections, which riff on the Sanrio characters and Morning Glory stationery that filled her childhood. Most of her work falls within a pastel colorway—happy colors, if you will—but she’ll branch