Eleven Madison Park Is No Longer Vegan, But It Never Really Was

Chef Daniel Humm once promised the world’s top restaurant would lead the plant-based revolution. Now he’s backtracking.

Daniel Humm, Head Chef and Owner of Eleven Madison Park (EMP), recently announced that the restaurant would revert to serving meat. Oysters, fish, and its infamous honey-lavender-glazed duck are back on the menu.

The change will come into effect in October, following four years of serving up plant-based cuisine to the tune of three Michelin stars.

Naturally, the news has caused a bit of a stir. The vegan community is very much…

While the meat-eaters among us stopped listening after “honey-lavender-glazed duck”. 

But what does this mean for plant-based fine dining? Has Chef Humm abandoned his ethics in favor of profits? Was it always a branding ploy, or something else?

A fine dining flop

While the anti-vegan crowd will no doubt take this as proof that “there’s no market for plant-based food”, the reality is less dramatic. All it really shows is that there’s not as much of a market for a $365 (plus $195-$365 wine pairing) vegan menu as there is for the same experience with meat and fish. That’s not news, it’s just common sense. 

Now I’m going to take a wild guess and say the type of clientele who can afford to regularly blow $1,000+ on dinner for two probably aren’t driven by ethics. 

They’re more likely to be the type of customer Chef Humm was referring to when he quoted diners saying things like, “I wish I could bring my husband, but he would never come.” 

It doesn’t take much imagination to picture that conversation. The husband, stuck in his ways, scared of vegetables, thinks that vegan food is salad and eating red meat makes you a man. Unfortunately for him, all it really does is raise his risk of heart disease.

But hey, maybe I’m being too harsh. It’s not fair to single him out. After all, we’ve raised generations to believe that protein = meat, calcium = dairy, and empathy = weakness.

This is a cultural issue. It’s not something EMP was ever really going to influence within that bracket of customer. The backlash, then, was inevitable.  

A short-lived revolution

When Eleven Madison Park reopened in 2021 with a fully plant-based menu, it made headlines around the world. Humm said the shift was driven by climate concerns, not animal ethics. He called it “a creative leap and a climate imperative,” and for a moment, it felt like one of the world’s most exclusive dining rooms might actually help push the needle.

The food was inventive. Dishes were built from unexpected ingredients: almond milk ricotta, land caviar, sunflower butter. EMP even launched its own “Magic Farms” to grow custom produce. In 2022, it became the first plant-based restaurant in the world to earn three Michelin stars.

It was a huge moment. As Chef Humm put it, “like walking on water”. (I won’t even bother getting into the connotations of that.) 

But for those paying close attention, it never quite added up.

Was EMP ever really vegan?

Despite the fanfare, EMP was never fully vegan. They always offered cows’ milk and honey with tea and coffee service. And while the menu didn’t contain meat, the motivations behind it weren’t rooted in animal rights or ethics.

Humm himself made it clear that the plant-based shift wasn’t about animals. It was about sustainability, creative challenge, and doing something “different.” And while that’s not inherently a problem, it left EMP open to criticism—especially from the vegan community, and especially now, when the gap between the image and the substance has become painstakingly clear.

If you serve animal products on request, can you really call yourself vegan? And if your change of heart comes just four years later, with a statement that sounds more like a rebrand than a reckoning, were the motivations ever genuine?

The answer is no. And maybe.

EMP was plant-based, not vegan. This isn’t about gatekeeping ‘vegan’ as some kind of exclusive status. It’s really not. But when restaurants, celebrities, or influencers present themselves as vegan despite not actually committing to the cause, it creates confusion. When they “quit veganism” a short time later, it’s damaging. It makes veganism seem like a diet. Something faddish and restrictive, that you can dip in and out of.

But veganism is none of those things. It’s about rejecting the commodity status of animals. It’s rooted in anti-speciesism. It’s an ideology, an ethical framework, and a system of beliefs and principles that guide behaviour.

(Or, if you’re a Facebook troll: a cult.)

It’s a social justice issue and arguably one of the most important movements of our time, given the immeasurable scale of animal abuse and the devastating impact of animal agriculture on the environment and global health.

That’s why the language matters. Framing plant-based eating as veganism dilutes the message and undermines the cause. It shifts the focus away from animal ethics and, in EMP’s case, onto environmentalism… or self-interested branding and innovation.

A masterclass in spin

Let’s look at Humm’s own words. In his newsletter, he writes:

“We had also unintentionally kept people out. This is the opposite of what we believe hospitality to be.”

The irony here is hard to ignore. A restaurant where a booze-free dinner costs $365 per person was never a model of inclusion. But somehow, serving plants was the thing that made it unwelcoming?

“As a chef, I want to continue to open paths, not close them. […] for me to truly champion plant-based cooking, I need to create an environment where everyone feels welcome around the table.”

That seems like a strange sentiment, given that everyone around a table can eat plants, and yet many people choose to abstain from eating animals. When he says “everyone”, why do I feel like he’s talking about that lady’s husband again?

If Humm had simply said: “This model isn’t working financially,” or “We’ve decided to go in a new direction,” fine. To be honest, he probably could have condensed the newsletter to a solitary “$”. 

To frame the return of shellfish, fish, meat, and poultry as a step forward feels like a slap in the face to the values EMP once claimed to champion.

Shall we revisit those values? 

Less than two years ago, in late 2023, Chef Humm sat down with Gabriela Hearst for Interview magazine. This is what he said. 

“Sometimes people say, “That was such a genius idea to go plant-based.” Honestly, it’s not genius at all. It’s obvious. If one pays attention to the world while working in food, there is only one place to go, and that’s cooking plant-based.”

“The first thing I was taught as a chef was to always start with the best possible ingredients, and all the animal products are no longer superior products. If my job is to bring the best ingredients to my guests, I can no longer serve meat or fish because those ingredients are from factory farming. The chickens have bird flu. The fish is full of plastic. The beef is filled with antibiotics. The Amazon is burning. There’s only one place to go as a creative.” 

I wonder what turned plant-based cooking from the “only place to go” to “keeping people out.”

What we do know is that chickens still have bird flu, fish are more full of plastic than ever before, and cows are still pumped full of antibiotics. The Amazon may not literally be on fire right this second, but scientists warn that it’s fast approaching the point of no return. Already, parts of it are emitting more carbon than they absorb. By all accounts, climate change has gotten worse, and the level of animal suffering in our food system is still unfathomable and ubiquitous. 

The bigger picture

Humm’s decision is part of a larger pattern. Time and again, we see sustainability and ethics used as branding tools in the food industry. They’re embraced when it’s convenient, and dropped when inconvenient.

In truth, the return of meat at Eleven Madison Park isn’t surprising. The real surprise would have been sticking with a model that genuinely challenged the status quo. And while EMP may continue to offer a plant-based menu, the signal is clear: for affluent NYC diners, animals are back on the table.

Hope exists across the pond

While EMP tragically backpedals, other fine dining establishments are making more positive changes.

Take Gauthier Soho in London. Chef Alexis Gauthier is a classically trained French chef, once known for shifting 20 kilograms of foie gras a week. He went vegan after PETA activists confronted him at his restaurant in 2015. He was moved by images of geese being tortured and force-fed to produce the ‘delicacy’ known as foie gras. At first, he changed only parts of his menu. But by 2021, Gauthier Soho was fully plant-based, not as a branding experiment, but as a reflection of Chef Gauthier’s personal convictions. And it’s still thriving.

Plates, London, is another success story. Earlier this year, this east London restaurant became the UK’s first fully vegan establishment to win a Michelin star. Chef Kirk Haworth’s journey began with Lyme disease and a belief that great food shouldn’t have to come at an ethical cost.

These aren’t restaurants dabbling in plant-based food for clout. They’re run by chefs who mean it. Real leaders who haven’t confused “hospitality” with appeasement.

Eleven Madison Park may have taken a step back. But the future of plant-based food isn’t on pause. It’s simmering elsewhere.