Exclusive Update: The Chef Who Shocked the Culinary World and Why He’s Changing Course Again—Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park

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1:20Hey, everyone. Welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So normally in this slot, we have an episode of the How I Built This Advice line, which will be back next week. But today, we've got an update to a story we told a few years back. And we'll put a link to the original interview in the show notes, which is well worth hearing. Anyway, you might remember the interview with Daniel Hoom, the legendary chef at 11 Madison Park in New York City. In that conversation, he announced on this show in 2021 that he would no longer use any animal products at the restaurant. I think we've all been able to take a step back and sort of re-evaluate and in a way maybe be a little bit more thoughtful also about the impact to our surroundings and the way we have sourced our food, the way we're consuming our food, the way we eat meat.

2:12It is not sustainable. That announcement rocked the world of fine dining. Why? Well, because Eleven Madison Park is one of the most iconic and celebrated restaurants in the world. In 2017, it was actually named the world's greatest restaurant. It's been awarded three Michelin stars every year since 2012. And when Daniel made that announcement, many people thought he was crazy. Up until that point, Michelin, which, as you probably know, is the most influential force in fine dining, had never awarded three stars to a purely vegan restaurant. 11 Madison Park changed that and became the first ever purely plant-based spot to win the coveted three-star designation.

2:56Now, to put this in perspective, it's estimated that there are 15 million restaurants in the world, but fewer than 160 have three Michelin stars. In the U.S., there are just 16. And EMP, as the restaurant is known, seem to be blazing an important trail. Because even though these fine dining restaurants account for just a small fraction of food establishments, they have outsized influence on the industry. Sort of like how you might see a video of a Paris fashion show and wonder, who wears that, only to see a version of it in H &M a year later? EMP was famous for its lavender-glazed duck and butter-poached lobster.

3:36It served the finest foie gras and caviar. But overnight, Daniel and his entire culinary team had to essentially relearn how to cook at the highest level, without demi-glace and butter and cream or anything that came from an animal. They visited Japan and discovered all kinds of new ingredients, things like tanburi, which is a seed from a cypress tree found mainly in Japan that tastes and feels like caviar. They had to learn how to make pastries and laminated breads using only plant-based ingredients. But the move didn't come without some controversy. Plenty of people in the industry perceived the move as political.

4:16And some longtime patrons felt excluded, like the restaurant was just for plant-based eaters. Some of that pushback was hard for Daniel. He insists he never even imagined people would see the move as anything other than a creative shift. And, of course, it did have an impact on the restaurant's bottom line. New York is a very expensive place to run a business. And it turns out working with just plants is also more expensive because it requires more staff and more work to turn the food into something spectacular, which is what EMP managed to do night after night. It's still hard to get a table there.

4:54But to make the economics work, you need high rollers, patrons who are also drinking expensive bottles of Burgundy and champagne. And those patrons, especially in New York, almost always want some meat as well. So after a lot of thinking and reimagining, Daniel Hume and his team decided to evolve once again. Vegetables will still be front and center. 90 % of the menu will stay plant-based, but a few non-plant-based items will come back. Daniel wanted to return to the show to explain his thinking and why going plant-based has fundamentally changed everything about his cooking forever. But first, I asked him to go back to the reasons why he went plant-based in the first place.

5:40After becoming the best restaurant in the world and having had three Michelin stars for a decade, we reached the number one spot in the world. and I started to feel a little restless creatively. I felt like I was sort of going in circles when we created our dishes. It felt we were repeating a lot. We did the lobster with leeks and then we did the lobster with butternut squash and then we did... But it was sort of like, as a creative, it didn't quite feel like groundbreaking. What should have been the way mountaintop felt a bit empty. And the hardest part was from that moment on, I no longer knew what was my North Star.

6:39And so after the pandemic, I wanted to build the restaurant and our cuisine without using any animal products. I want to just break this down for a minute. First of all, here you are in your early 40s having mastered cooking, the art of cooking, right? And all of a sudden, I'm assuming you did not know how to make something that tastes like butter without cream. How to do these things. You literally had to relearn how to be a chef. To me, that could have not been anything more exciting. Also, I think there's so much magic in the cooking. It's almost like alchemy when you can transform a carrot into a luxury experience.

7:33I think it was really important to have such boundaries to really exclude any animal products, to push this creativity the way we have, to find the answer of how to laminate a bread, how to make, you know, butter with sunflower oil, or how to make a ricotta with almond milk. How to make caviar out of a tree. How to? From a tree. Yes. I've tried it. It's tamburi. Yeah, it's from the cypress plant. Cypress, yeah. And it is, yeah, I've learned tamburi, which is also referred as land caviar, But it's something that is used in Japan mostly in the Zen Buddhist cuisine. And so we discovered so much. Things you didn't even know that existed before.

8:35That's right. That's right. I'm celebrating my 20-year anniversary at 11 Madison Park beginning of next year. And so a quarter of that time, the restaurant has been fully plant-based. And our cooking has completely changed. Everything about the way you think about food and make food has changed. We will never revert back to butter glazes, chicken stock, the demi-glace. It's fundamentally changed because we have learned in some ways to make things even better. We started our own farm upstate, which we would have never done if we would have not been so focused on the vegetables. One of the things that I think is important to point out is that I don't believe you were trying to send a message to the world saying, don't eat meat, stop eating meat, stop eating animal products, restaurants just stop serving it.

9:38That was not in any way what you were saying. You wanted to use the vehicle, the restaurant, as a way to encourage people to think differently about plants. Is that fair to say? I mean, you were not condemning the consumption of meat. I mean, in this case, I believe my naivete was an asset. Your naivete to make the decision to go plant-based. Yeah, because if I would have known all the things that I know today, I don't think I would have had the courage to go down this path. Our decision created a global debate that far transcended food. And this is something that we were not prepared for. For a lot of people, going to a plant-based restaurant isn't a choice of cuisine, but it's like a life's choice.

10:42And with this change, some of our guests felt excluded. They had the feeling of not being welcome anymore. That it was just for vegans. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like, oh, let's have Korean food tonight or let's go to a steakhouse or let's do plant-based tonight. Yeah. And that's what you thought this was going to be. Absolutely. Oh, it's just going to be another type of cuisine. Absolutely. Let's get French food tonight. Let's go to a Persian. No. The thing about plant-based or vegan is that most people think of it as a lifestyle change, shift. Is you're either that or you're not? It was almost like a political view, and I never intended to be part of a political debate.

11:36We just wanted to cook vegetables because it's better for the planet, and we love the creativity that it brings. The restaurant got some outstanding reviews, also had some really harsh reviews. That was tough on you and the team. But were you surprised at some of the backlash, some of the backlash from people who were genuinely angry at you and at this decision? Well, in the early days, the experience inside the wall of the restaurant didn't match sort of the incoming criticism. And I think that, to us, was confusing. And also, we felt so empowered and satisfied by the experience and by the learning that we just continued.

12:49And then, slowly, things started to turn around. I remember sort of early on the cattle rancher from Texas, and he sent me this long letter. And the letter was sort of like he decided for his 40th birthday to have dinner at Eleven Madison Park, a fully plant-based restaurant, as a cattle rancher. And he said his wife was confused about that decision. but then he said as the meal goes on and he's eating all different types of asparagus the morels and the spring onions he's realizing that he is having one of the best meals of his life if not the best meal of his life and so that conversation really interests me because now we're really having a conversation So I think all this was very motivating for me because I do believe a restaurant has the power to make an impact in the world.

14:08And this is definitely something that continues to be on North Star. Yeah. And when we were invited to the Mishla ceremony in 2022, I was unsure. If you would retain your three stars. What would happen? Were you nervous that night? I was very nervous because I knew how crucial it was and how much of a milestone this would be in the world of cuisine. There's never been a restaurant that received three Mishnah stars with a plant-based cuisine. So Michelin created fine dining, the rules of fine dining. They're the guardians of this very classical way of cooking. And that night when it was announced that we are the first restaurant to receive three Michelin stars, it did feel like we're walking on water.

15:22Do you, I mean, from a business perspective, right, there's a lot of pressure because you aren't just the chef, but you're the owner. Yeah. And you manage a team of like 200 people, I think. It's a huge number of people who depend on you and the restaurant for their livelihoods. Were there moments over the last four years where, I don't know, you felt, I don't know, not up to the task? Did you have self-doubt? We definitely saw a dip in revenue because the audience we're catering to became a lot smaller. And we've learned that cooking plant-based is more also dependent on the seasons. In the spring and summer, it's an easier sell.

16:15in the fall, in the winter, it's harder for people to wrap their head around it. It's selling less wine. And wine, you need to sell a lot of wine in order to sustain a restaurant. I mean, you're in Manhattan. Yeah. The rent is high. Yeah. Salaries are high. Yeah. It's a big staff. Yeah. It's a luxury experience. You serve 100 people a night, right? Yeah. And even if you're fully sold out every night for months and months and months and months, which you have been, it's not enough to sustain when it's – When you don't sell the wine. When you're not selling the wine. And when you don't sell your private events, which are like events for 30 or 40 people.

16:59Right. It's very hard to have people buy into an event when you don't have a signature roast. And does only using plants require more labor, higher labor costs? Our labor costs went up by like 20%. Wow. Like it requires more cooks to bring that magic to the carrots and to the onions. So yeah, it's gotten harder from a business perspective. And our guests at times have put us in this box. Our goal at the end of the day is to welcome people around the table, and everyone is welcome around the table. That is the highest purpose of a restaurant. If what's on the plate or what's not on the plate keeps people from coming, then that would be devastating and we would be missing our mark.

17:58And when we listen to all the feedback, we believe that it is time for another change. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Daniel explains for the first time his next big step at 11 Madison Park. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz. You're listening to a special episode of How I Built This Lab.

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22:08Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So four years after shocking the world of fine dining by turning his three-star Michelin restaurant into a 100 % plant-based operation, Daniel Hume says it's time for another important pivot. I understand now that for most, dining at a plant-based restaurant is more of a life choice than a choice of cuisine. I feel incredibly lucky that I've had the privilege to see this creative endeavor through for almost five years. But I've made the decision now that it's time for another change. and starting in October, we will reintegrate a few animal products such as fish or shellfish and yes, we will bring our duck back, our honey lavender glazed duck.

23:13We've always listened to the feedback and what we've heard is that to be the most hospitable version of our restaurant today is to offer a choice. Our use of animal products will be deliberate. With the base of our cuisine staying plant-based and offering individual experiences to some of our guests' preferences so that we can welcome everyone around the table, the whole family. Trevor Burrus So you came to a decision to reintroduce some meat, some animal products, right? And was it hard for you to come to that decision or did you feel like, you know, I tried this thing and it's changed what I do, how I think, how I cook and this is the next chapter of that?

24:14because inevitably, you know this, people who hear about this and find out about this, there are going to be some people who say, oh, it failed. This experiment failed. It was a process, of course, to get to this point because when we made this decision, we dove all in hard. And we had to. You have to really firmly believe of what you're doing and where you're going. Otherwise, it feels this genuine. And that was very much where I was at in the pandemic. I wanted to create the first plant-based restaurant that receives three Michelin stars. And the voices around me were like, this is not going to work.

25:09This will fail. People who were your friends and supporters. Yeah, people had a lot of doubts. We created a new language. We created a new cuisine. We wrote an entire new book called The Plant-Based Chapter. It's fundamentally different. But we have over 200 people working in a restaurant that serves 100 people. The Martians are razor thin. and it requires for us to be full all the time. It's the only way you can maintain this level and this team. And so, yeah, but it is possible. We just got to continue to also have that hat on. It's not just a creative endeavor. It's a business. And I think if we want to continue to be part of the conversation, it has to be sustainable as a business.

26:28Do you think that – like I think the analogy would be like if – because a lot of people ask me – they'll sort of say, well, why are these sort of Michelin three-star restaurants? So a lot of people talk about them. Very few people dine at them. Many more people eat at a red sauce Italian place, right? But the reason they're important is because it's sort of like why is the runway show in Paris important? Like we're not all wearing that. But we will wear things that are inspired by that in a year from now. Like we will find them in main street shops. And it's similar with like fine dining restaurants.

27:03They sort of set the tone that trickles down to food. I mean inevitably, right? There are going to be all kinds of reactions. And that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But there will be people who say, well, you know, it doesn't work. It can't work. You can't have that. You can't sustain a restaurant at that level. What do you say? Like what's your response to that? For me, it took a long time to come to this next step of evolution. and part of it was because we put so much this flag in the ground and people saying it's not going to work.

27:57And you don't want to be like some of those voices. Maybe they had a point. part of what they're saying, there was some truth to it. You feel that way? I feel that it's such a big change. It's a change in our industry. It was a change to our suppliers. So I think there's a lot of fear that comes up with that. I don't know all the reasons why people said this will not work. But if it was for the reasons that it wasn't inclusive, then I think they definitely had a point. But to me, it very much is a success because our restaurant today is fundamentally different. And now we're incorporating a few animal products where we're going to be very deliberate about what these are.

29:06And we studied a lot the Mediterranean diet and we traveled with our team to Greece and to Italy. And, you know, that diet is mostly plant-based. Just a little bit of meat. It's a little bit of fish and a little bit of meat for special occasions. It's also what Michael Pollan has been preaching. Eat mainly plants. Eat little and mostly plants. Right. And you mentioned Greece and Italy. And like, was that trip sort of, did that start to turn the gears in your head again about the next sort of iteration of what you want to do and how you want to present food? Yeah, I feel like I started to realize that to create real change, we can't be as dogmatic.

30:11And when we looked at ancient cultures, which none of them have a lot of meat in their diet, but it's also not no meat. I think it's important that where we're heading is informed by sort of ancient practices, but then also modern techniques. And then we're finding sort of a place in the middle. Trevor Burrus So moving forward, when somebody – I mean the idea is at EMP, somebody is going to dine there who would not have gone there before because they didn't feel like it was for them. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Trevor Burrus And they can have some duck if they want and there might be some cheese. But you want them to walk out having been exposed to preparation of vegetables that they would not have eaten anywhere else.

31:16Like they're going to walk out of that experience saying, wow, this was like – like the best thing I had was the carrot cooked 15 hours at low temperature, whatever it might be. My goal is that everyone can be around the table and different dishes are going to resonate with different people. we have created a new language of cooking that is based in plant-based cooking. And if you want, you will have the choice for a fish or for a lobster or for a duck. We're not anti-meat, but we are pro-planet. and we believe that we need to reduce the consumption of meat in the world. And that is a fact. That's not something I came up with.

32:13But so if we can celebrate vegetables and have a little bit of meat or a little bit of fish, I think we're in really good shape. And that will really move the needle. So probably a lot of the things like the desserts and the bread will still be no animal products at all. You're going to have cream in your desserts or butter in the croissant. You know, I think when we find a product that we're really excited about, that we want to highlight, this could be a cheese and this could be a butter or it could be a cream. And when the dish becomes about that product, then we will use it. Right. But we will not just mix it into every single dish like it used to be.

33:06But any great product has the potential to become a dish of Eleven Madison Park if that becomes the main focus. Yeah. Yeah. And will you have to reestablish some relationships that you lost? You know, it was really interesting when we made this change. We did get some – we upset some – some people were upset. Yeah. Some of our suppliers were upset and they felt like somehow we are turning our back on them, which of course in a way we did because we stopped ordering certain things. But this was never meant to be personal or this was never meant to be about a supplier or even some chefs, I could feel they were a little bit rubbed the wrong way because maybe they felt that maybe there's some changes coming.

34:22and maybe they need to start changing certain things. But this wasn't ever about anyone else other than what I wanted to do as a chef. And I was in a creative rut. I wasn't fulfilled. I had the opportunity to create something entirely different, to learn about new cultures I never looked at, traveling India, traveling Japan, learning about the Zen Buddhist cuisine. going to the Middle East, all these places, it's changed my life. It's changed me as a chef, and I'm extremely grateful. And the team is grateful. Today I feel like our cuisine is its own. Before, I think it was always a version of something that already existed.

35:16And today I feel like I really found my voice. today the cuisine is very authentic to 11 Madison Park. After the break, what Daniel thinks his decision means for himself and for 11 Madison Park. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to a special episode of How I Built This Lab.