Famous NYC restaurant that charges $365 for dinner dumps vegan menu because it wasn't making enough money

Daily Mail​

a day ago

An iconic New York City restaurant which charges diners $365 for high-end tasting dishes has ditched its all-vegan menu because they weren't making enough money.
Eleven Madison Park is a high-end restaurant sitting on the corner of Madison Avenue and 24th St - right next to the famous Madison Square Park.
For the past four years, the restaurant has exclusively served a seven to nine-course tasting menu featuring all vegan dishes.
However, the chef - Daniel Humm - has now decided to re-introduce animal products to the menu, citing financial stresses as part of the reason.
Humm also claimed that he is bringing meat back for the sake of hospitality, telling the New York Times that he doesn't want to 'exclude' people.
'I very much believed in the all-in approach, but I didn't realize that we would exclude people,' he said.
'I have some anxiety that people are going to say, "Oh, he's a hypocrite," but I know that the best way to continue to champion plant-based cooking is to let everyone participate around the table.'
As for the financial struggles, Humm reported that the restaurant found it increasingly hard over the last year to maintain the level of creativity and labor required to keep business going strong.
Humm also said that the vegan menu wasn't attracting large events - like corporate dinners.
'It's hard to get 30 people for a corporate dinner to come to a plant-based restaurant,' he said.
Another hit the restaurant took was in wine sales. 'For wine aficionados, grand cru goes with meat,' Humm said.
The new meat-inclusive menu will begin on October 14. It will still offer seven to nine courses for $365, and it will still be largely plant-based, but some of the dishes will incorporate meat.
A statement posted by Eleven Madison Park and Humm on Instagram said: 'Change is fundamental to who we are and how we grow... Starting October 14th, we will integrate our new culinary language into a menu that embraces choice.
'We will offer a plant-based menu, of course, but also select animal products for certain dishes...'
Restaurant-goers will have the opportunity to opt in to include certain meat or seafood options in certain dishes.
This will include the possibility of oysters, lobster and dry-aged duck covered with lavender honey - which has been singled out by critics as a favorite.
Humm is also contemplating adding a chicken dish to the tasting menu.
Diners who still want a fully vegan experience are able to do so.
The fully-vegan menu was introduced by Humm in 2021, when he re-opened the restaurant after it had been closed for 15 months due to Covid.
Humm spent the pandemic fighting bankruptcy and working with Rethink Food - a nonprofit that he co-founded which serves millions of free meals to medical workers and less-fortunate members of the NYC community.
During this time, Humm came to view luxury food less as expensive animal products - like foie gras and caviar, and more as carefully-sourced food prepared with skill and creativity.
'We couldn't go back to doing what we did before,' Humm told the New York Times when he announced the vegan menu in 2021.
There were critics who viewed the plant-based pivot as just another pretentious stunt by a creative chef - who, on one occasion, created a menu that required waiters to perform card tricks.
Meanwhile others doubted that people would pay hundreds of dollars for vegan food.
Some considered the decision an important move towards sustainability, as people become more aware of how the food they consume affects the environment.
The restaurant gained mixed reviews during its vegan days, but overall it is rated very highly.
Back in 2021, New York Times critic Pete Wells had little time for a certain dehydrated beetroot dish served in a clay pot that is broken open at the table, saying that it 'tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.'
Eleven Madison Park has 4.4 stars on Google reviews, 4.3 on Yelp and an impressive 4.7 on Resy - where it has been rated almost 7,000 times.
With only a handful of bad reviews, most of them complained about the vegan food.
'I visited Eleven Madison Park prior to the pandemic and had an incredible experience. Unfortunately after it decided to go vegan, I had not heard the best things about this place,' one wrote.
They continued: 'Unfortunately, the food was a complete miss in my opinion. As you can see in my other reviews, I am just not a fan of vegan food.'
Another review said: 'I was vegan for a while and had amazing vegan food when I lived in California so that is what I was comparing this too and I have to say I was extremely disappointed.'