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In pretty big food-related news, Eleven Madison Park chef and owner Daniel Humm just announced that his iconic, high-end restaurant is reopening as an entirely vegan institution come June 10.
In case you're not understanding the magnitude of the decision: according to Eater, out of the 132 restaurants with three Michelin stars all around the world, none at all are vegan.
Humm himself made the news public on the latest episode of NPR's How I Built This podcast, hosted by Guy Raz, earlier today. "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. This is just a fact," he said. "So we decided that our restaurant will be 100 percent plant-based."
What that means is that once the famous kitchen starts dishing out plates to customers once more, the staff won't be using any sort of butter, cream, beef, chicken and fish, for example.
The cost of a meal at Eleven Madison Park—which could run up to $1,000 per couple in pre-COVID-19 times—is obviously a major topic of discussion. Eater reports that the pre-fixe menu will cost each customer $335, including gratuity, although there hasn't been an official announcement about that just yet.
This is just the latest piece of news involving the infamous eatery to make headlines during the pandemic. Just last month, we reported on the restaurant's decision to launch a new food truck for New Yorkers in need across Brooklyn and the Bronx in collaboration with Rethink Food. Clearly, Humm and his team are dedicated to building a gastronomic future that is as sustainable, fair and eco-friendly as they come.
Speaking of sustainability: as unprecedented as Eleven Madison Park's devotion to meatless cooking is when measured against the practices of other super high-end, white table cloth restaurants, a demand for vegan menus has slowly but steadily made itself apparent throughout the city in recent months. The city's first fully vegan community fridge, for example, now sits right outside a gym on Bleecker Street and Fat Choy, a relatively new restaurant on the Lower East Side that has received major accolades since first opening, only serves Chinese-inspired vegan cuisine.
The New York gastronomy world is at the dawn of a new era.
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