3-Star Restaurant Known for Meat Ditching the Meat

A Manhattan restaurant once considered the best in the world will no longer serve meat. David Humm's Eleven Madison Park, which topped the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2017 but failed to land a place in 2019, plans to serve "an eight to ten course menu … consisting of entirely plant-based dishes" when it reopens its main dining room for in-person service on June 10, according to its website. Humm is best known for his meat and seafood dishes, including "lobster poached in mushroom butter" and "smoked-sturgeon cheesecake with caviar," per the Wall Street Journal. But "if Eleven Madison Park is truly at the forefront of dining and culinary innovation, to me it’s crystal clear that this is the only place to go next," the chef tells the outlet. He notes the restaurant will not be entirely vegan, however, as it will still serve milk and honey for coffee.

"There is only one three-Michelin-star restaurant that serves no meat or seafood: King's Joy in Beijing," per the Journal. It remains to be seen whether Eleven Madison Park will keep its three Michelin stars without butter, cream, beef, chicken, or fish but with the same $335 multicourse menu price tag, per the New York Times. But Journal reporter Adam Davidson isnt worried. He tasted what looked like "a regular old cooked beet" prepared by Humm's team—in fact it was the result of a 16-hour process—and was wowed. Humm tells NPR that he thought a lot about his legacy after closing his restaurant as a result of the pandemic last March. "The way we have sourced our food, the way we're consuming our food, the way we eat meat—it is not sustainable," he says. The goal is to "create a restaurant that meat-eater will be blown away by eating vegetables." (More restaurants stories.)