Eleven Madison Park (EMP) has been the world's best restaurant, a pandemic community kitchen, the first plant-based three-star in history, and now something new again. What's stayed constant through all of it is the way the room makes you feel when you walk in.

First Impression


Vaulted ceilings. Art Deco windows. The feeling that something is about to happen.


The address is 11 Madison Avenue, on the northeast corner of East 24th Street, directly across from Madison Square Park. The building is Art Deco, grand, the kind of Manhattan architecture that makes you feel the weight of the city's ambition as you walk in. The restaurant occupies the ground floor, and the moment you step through the revolving door and look up at the vaulted ceilings and the tall windows with the park framed in them, you understand why people reserve months in advance and fly in from other countries just to sit here.


The room is, by almost every account, one of the most beautiful dining rooms in the world - not in the decorated, over-considered way of a hotel ballroom, but in the way that comes from a great space being treated with restraint. High ceilings, generous proportions, art on the walls that means something because Humm chose it himself and in several cases knows the artists personally. The light is right. The tables are spaced generously. You arrive with expectations and the room meets them before a single dish appears.


And then the service begins, and the room becomes secondary to the people in it.

How It Started


Danny Meyer opened it. Daniel Humm made it the best in the world.


EMP opened in 1998 as part of Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group - a grand restaurant in a grand room, well guarded, not yet remarkable. That changed in 2006 when a young Swiss chef named Daniel Humm arrived to run the kitchen. Humm had earned his first Michelin start at 24, had done serious time in French technique, and brought to Madison Avenue a classical instinct and an obsession with refinement that the room seemed to have been waiting for.


The ascent was fast and then faster. Four stars from the New York Times in 2009. Three Michelin stars from 2012, held consecutively. The restaurant built an identity around New York itself - honey-lavender-glazed duck that became a signature, dishes named for the city's neighborhoods, a Long Island clam bake that arrived tableside, a picnic basket that turned into a whole story. In 2011, Humm and his then-partner Will Guidara bought the restaurant from Meyer. In 2017, the World's 50 Best named Eleven Madison Park the best restaurant on the planet.


"I've learned that for me to truly champion plant-based cooking, I need to create an environment where everyone feels welcome around the table."
~ Daniel Humm, 2025


Then came the pandemic. The kitchen was converted to a commissary, producing meals for food-insecure New Yorkers through a partnership with Rethink Food. When the restaurant reopened in 2021, it came back as something entirely new: the world's first fully plant-based three-Michelin-star restaurant. No meat, no fish, no butter, no cream. Just vegetables, legumes, grains, fruit - and three Michelin stars retained through 2024, the first time in history that distinction had been awarded to a plant-based kitchen.


In October 2025, Humm made another turn: select animal proteins returned alongside the plant-based foundation. The honey-lavender duck - the dish that made the restaurant famous - came back to the menu. The plant-based option remains for every course. The stars remain. And the room, through all of it, has remained exactly as it was: vaulted, golden-lit, and unmistakably itself.

The Thing People Talk About Most


The food is extraordinary. The service is what people remember.


Will Guidara, Humm's former partner who ran the front of house until 2019, wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality that became genuinely influential in the industry -  and the title describes exactly what Eleven Madison Park has always done. The team overhears things. They remember preferences. They find the T.rex cardboard cutout for the guest who mentioned working at the Natural History Museum. They light candles on the right plate without being asked, for the birthday they heard mentioned in passing.


The staff are called Dreamweavers internally - people whose specific role is to listen for details and act on them before you think to ask. This sounds like a gimmick in description. At the table, it produces the specific feeling of being genuinely looked after rather than professionally served. The difference is real and it's felt immediately.


Multiple guests describe a mid-meal visit to the kitchen, where the team serves an egg cream made with house oat milk - a New York City icon, reimagined quietly in a Michelin kitchen. Others describe coats that appeared without asking at the end of the evening, goodie bags of EMP granola, menus signed by Humm himself. The meal ends with small chocolate-covered pretzels. The attention to detail is in the pretzels too.


None of it feels performed. That's the harder thing to achieve - making hospitality feel natural rather than choreographed. It's what separates a great restaurant from one people build their trips around.

What's on the Menu


Plant-forward at its core. The duck is back. Both things are true.


As of October 2025, the menu offers a plant-based foundation with the option to include select animal proteins on certain courses. You can eat entirely plant-based - the kitchen is built for it and the results are genuinely extraordinary - or you can add fish, meat or the duck. The price is the same either way. The vegetable cooking is the soul of the place regardless of what else arrives alongside it.


Honey-Lavender-Glazed Duck


The dish that made the restaurant famous, back on the menu after four years away. Served with Napa cabbage and pear. The glaze is exactly what it says — floral, sweet, lacquered. The kind of course that becomes a memory rather than just a meal.


Carrot Tartare


A DIY course from the bar menu that has become something of a signature for the plant-based era. The carrot is prepared with the same attention given to steak tartare in another kitchen — the seasoning, the texture, the ritual of assembling it yourself. A dish that makes you reconsider what a vegetable can be.


Eggplant with Tomato-Shiso Vinaigrette


One of the plant-based era's most accomplished dishes: eggplant with pickles in a tomato-shiso vinaigrette, silky in the way that Humm's kitchen has learned to achieve without cream or butter. It mimics the richness of tuna confit — not by disguising itself, but by being itself fully.


Blueberry Elderflower Ice Disc


A dessert that earns its moment. An ice disc moulded with the EMP logo, tangy and salty and textured in ways that keep shifting as it melts. Not sweet in the expected way. The kind of dessert that makes you put down your fork and actually pay attention.


The Oat Milk Egg Cream


Served mid-meal during a kitchen visit, this is the New York moment in miniature: a classic soda fountain drink, made with house oat milk, in a three-star kitchen. It's been described as one of the best things about the whole evening. That says something about what Humm understands about joy.


Sesame Chocolate Pretzels


The meal ends here, with something that doesn't take itself seriously. A small chocolate-covered pretzel that tastes, according to more than one guest, remarkably like chocolate-covered cookie dough. The detail in the ending is as considered as the detail in the beginning.


The Seasonal Vegetable Course


Changes with what Magic Farms — the farm that cultivates produce exclusively for EMP — is growing. Whatever it is, it's the freshest version of itself: leeks with cheddar in autumn, tomatoes with lemon in summer, winter squash with brown butter. The kitchen's relationship with its single farm supplier shows in every plate.


The Cheese Course


Harbison in a washed rind cheese fondue with mustard and pear — one of the communal courses that arrive mid-meal and shift the tempo of the evening. The shared dishes are deliberate: Humm believes that eating together is the essence of the restaurant, and the format of the meal reflects that.

THe Menus


Three ways in. One standard across all of them.


Eleven Madison Park offers three distinct ways to experience the kitchen, from the full tasting menu in the main dining room to a more accessible bar experience. The bar is also open for walk-ins, which is worth knowing if a reservation seems out of reach.


  • Full Tasting Menu (385 USD per person): Seven to eight courses in the main dining room. A mix of plated and communal dishes. Around two or three hours. Plant-based foundation with the option to include select animal proteins on certain courses. Wine pairing additional.
  • Bar Tasting Menu (225 USD per person): Four or five courses in the lounge. Around two hours. The same kitchen, the same standards, a slightly shorter and more relaxed format. Fully plant-based. Available via reservation or sometimes walk-in.
  • Clemente Bar (À la carte): The upstairs bar - an art project as much as a drinking space, designed in collaboration with artist Francesco Clemente, who painted directly onto the walls. Cocktails, snacks, walls. Cocktails, snacks, and its own fully plant-based tasting menu. A different kind of EMP evening.  
Something New Upstairs


The bar that Francesco Clemente painted by hand, on the walls.


Clemente Bar opened in October 2024 in what had been EMP's private dining room on the upper floor. It is a collaboration between Humm and the New York-based neo-expressionist artist Francesco Clemente - a friendship that became a space. Clemente painted directly onto the walls: sweeping friezes rich with gold, figures embracing and floating, dreamlike imagery that makes the room feel like a place you've been before in a dream but can't quite place.


Humm described it as a jewel inside the jewel. The bar menu is fully plant-based. The cocktails are considered in the same way the food is considered. The room is intimate in a way the main dining room, with its grand proportions, isn't - and different guests will find different things to love about each. Worth knowing that both exist.


Bookings are taken on a rolling basis, with new slots released daily. Walk-ins are sometimes possible. It's the more accessible entry point into the EMP world - and a very good evening in its own right.

Before yOu Do


Everything practical, plainly told


  • Address: 11 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010 — corner of East 24th Street and Madison Avenue, directly across from Madison Square Park
  • Subway: N, R, W to 23rd Street. Also reachable from 28th Street on the 6 line. The walk across the park is worth doing even if you're arriving from the south.
  • Hours: Check elevenmadisonpark.com for current service times — hours shift by season. Generally dinner service Wednesday through Sunday; the bar has broader availability including walk-ins.
  • Bookings: Via Resy for the main dining room and bar tasting menu. Clemente Bar reservations at clementebar.com, with walk-ins also possible. Bar seating is open to both walk-ins and reservations.
  • Price: Full tasting menu $385pp, bar tasting menu $225pp, both before drinks and service. Wine pairings range widely — clarify in advance. The full experience with wine can reach considerably higher than the base price.
  • The Menu: Full tasting menu $385pp, bar tasting menu $225pp, both before drinks and service. Wine pairings range widely — clarify in advance. The full experience with wine can reach considerably higher than the base price.
  • Dietary Needs: Flag everything at time of booking. The kitchen is built for this conversation and adapts thoughtfully. Having dined plant-based for four years as a three-star restaurant, the team has an unusually deep knowledge of alternative ingredients and preparations.
  • Dress: The room invites consideration. Business casual at minimum; the energy rewards something a little more considered. Not stiff, but intentional — in keeping with how the team approaches everything else.
Things Worth Knowing


A few notes from people who've been


  • Tell the team everything: Birthdays, anniversaries, dietary preferences, the fact that you collect vintage wine or that your husband is obsessed with dinosaurs. The Dreamweaver team listens and acts on what they hear. The more you give them to work with, the more the evening becomes specifically yours. This is not performative — it's genuinely how the restaurant works.
  • The bar menu is the more accessible route in: At $225 per person, the bar tasting menu represents four to five courses of the same kitchen, in a less formal setting, with the option to walk in on some evenings. For a first visit, or for a shorter evening, it's not a compromise — it's a different experience of the same place.
  • Arrive with an open mind about the plant-based courses: Even if you choose the animal protein option, the foundation of the meal is vegetables, and the kitchen's four-year period of exclusively plant-based cooking produced techniques and preparations that are genuinely extraordinary. The eggplant dish. The carrot tartare. The seasonal produce from Magic Farms. These courses have earned their place.
  • Look at the art: Humm chose each piece personally and in several cases knows the artists. The Olympia Scarry glass mosaic at the entrance. The Rashid Johnson murals. The colorful faces along the corridor to the restrooms that several guests describe as oddly moving. The room rewards curiosity before the meal begins.
  • Go upstairs before or after dinner: Clemente Bar is worth the visit on its own terms and is much easier to access than the main dining room. If you can't get a main dining room reservation, Clemente is not a consolation — it's genuinely one of the most interesting bar spaces in New York right now.
  • Accept the granola: Every guest leaves with a jar of EMP granola. Several people describe ordering it online after the meal because they kept thinking about it. Take the jar. Eat it slowly. It's one of the small, considered details that makes the experience feel complete rather than merely expensive.
  • Book via Resy well in advance - but check for cancellations: The main dining room books up fast, particularly at weekends. Resy releases tables periodically and cancellations do come back — worth checking regularly if your preferred date shows as unavailable. The bar and Clemente Bar are meaningfully more accessible.
While You're In the Neighborhood


NoMad and the blocks around Madison Square Park


The NoMad neighbourhood around Madison Square Park has quietly become one of the better parts of Manhattan to spend time in. The park itself is one of the most pleasant green spaces in the city — worth arriving early to walk through before dinner, especially in good weather.


  • Madison Square Park: Directly across from the restaurant. The Shake Shack started here, which is a fun fact to have in mind while you eat a nine-course tasting menu across the street. In warmer months the park has art installations. Worth twenty minutes before your reservation.
  • Clemente Bar: Upstairs in the same building — a bar designed by Francesco Clemente with paintings made directly on the walls, plant-based cocktails, snacks, and an entirely different energy from the main dining room. Accessible most evenings, including walk-ins.
  • The Flatiron Building: Five minutes' walk south. Worth approaching from the north end of the park to see it head-on. One of Manhattan's most recognisable buildings, and the neighbourhood it anchors is worth wandering through before or after dinner.
  • Eataly: Five minutes north on Fifth Avenue. A useful morning-after destination for provisions, good coffee, and a reminder that Italian food culture and American scale can coexist productively. Worth an hour before any onward journey.
Why This Place


What Eleven Madison Park actually represents


There are restaurants that are famous and restaurants that are worth being famous. Eleven Madison Park has been both — not always at the same time, not without controversy, and not without the kind of evolution that makes some people uncomfortable and others more interested. That history is part of what makes sitting in the room feel like something.


The pandemic conversion of a three-star kitchen into a community commissary — producing millions of meals for food-insecure New Yorkers through Rethink Food — was not a PR exercise. Humm did it because the alternative was sitting in an empty restaurant wondering what food was actually for. The plant-based pivot in 2021 was not commercially rational. Humm did it because he believed the industry needed to change and that restaurants with his platform had a responsibility to make that case out loud. The return of proteins in 2025 was honest about the limits of how a restaurant can sustain a moral argument when the economics are working against it.


"In 2025, the Luxury Travel Book listed Eleven Madison Park as the most-searched Michelin-starred restaurant in the world. The room has changed several times since 1998. The search hasn't stopped."


What you get at the table, through all of this, is a restaurant that has never stopped asking what it's supposed to be. That quality — restlessness in the best sense, a refusal to stay comfortable — is felt in the food and more visibly in the service. The team doesn't coast. The meal doesn't repeat itself from course to course. The hospitality is specific to you in a way that takes real work to achieve at scale.


New York has other great restaurants. It doesn't have many that carry this particular weight — of history, of reinvention, of a dining room that has seen so many versions of itself and remained, through all of them, exactly the kind of place you want to spend three hours on a significant evening.


Go for the duck if you want the duck. Go for the eggplant if you want to understand what four years of serious plant-based cooking produced. Go upstairs for a drink in the Clemente Bar and look at the paintings on the walls. Walk across the park beforehand when the light is right. Accept the granola. The evening will take care of itself from there.