Chef Daniel Hamm’s all-vegan menu at Eleven Madison Park is blooming after a difficult period

Daniel Hamm has two words for the critics who toasted him after ditching meat and fish for an all-vegan menu: beets!

The chef and owner of Eleven Madison Park has regained gastronomic glory by turning his NoMad restaurant into a vegan temple over the past 19 months — and it’s not because of overwhelming press support.

When Hamm first told diners that their $365 10-course meal would no longer include duck, lobster and caviar, there was a lot of customer anxiety, he confirms. Meanwhile, critics accused him of serving what they called expensive but predictable vegan food.

The most famous New York Times critic, Pete Wells, said that the beetroot dish “tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.”

Hamm, 48, declined to specifically comment on the harsh coverage. But he admitted that from the start, putting together an all-vegetable menu proved to be more of a challenge than he had planned.

“At the beginning, we were like, ‘What’s the main course?’,” Hamm said. “We did not know. There was no textbook that would tell you how it’s done.”

In the end, Hamm says he had to rethink the dining experience. The accolades and helpers returned, and in October, EMP was awarded three Michelin stars—vegan for the first time. The prestigious restaurant guide praised Hamm’s “zealous commitment to masterful precision” and called his plant-based menu “an audacious vision for luxury cuisine.”

“The freshly baked, delicately toasted vegan roll with artificial butter is a magical creation,” said the guide. “Tonburi quenelles imitating caviar topped with horseradish cream and accompanied by radish tostada with a bit of pumpkin seed oil is simply stunning.”

Instead of using seasonal vegetables as a supplement to animal proteins, Hamm says, the season itself has become history.

“I thought that we would be limited, but it turned out that we used to be limited because we prepared seasonal seasonings for meat and fish. Today we are preparing the season in full. All meals are seasonal.

While pre-ordering is no longer impossible, the mood in the dining room is “almost euphoric, and that’s probably because it’s plant-based,” Hamm said, adding that the patrons are younger and more diverse.

“Before, by the time people had their main course, the energy would drop. People were full, sleepy and wanted to go home,” said the Swiss-born chef. “Now it’s completely the opposite. As night falls, the energy in the dining room fully increases.”

The pandemic was a key factor in forcing Hamm, a former professional cyclist, to change gears. He closed the restaurant and turned it into a Rethink Food store founded by an EMP alum, where Hamm is a member of the board of directors. The public kitchen served 1 million meals during the 16 months of EMP’s closure, he said.

When it came time to reopen the restaurant, Hamm said, “It was clear that I needed to use the language of food because the pandemic had not only exposed food insecurity, it had exposed a lot of broken systems, and I felt I had a responsibility. and a unique platform to be truly honest with what I’ve seen as a chef.”

Now, according to Hamm, his focus remains on elevating vegan cuisine to its rightful place on the cooking table.

“I wanted to use my language to show that you can make incredibly delicious, beautiful, magical food without animal products,” he said. “I’m more convinced than ever that we’re on the right side of history.”

Today, part of the $365/person EMP tasting menu (8 to 10 courses) and the $195/person bar tasting menu (6 courses) go toward paying for 500 meals per day that EMP chefs prepare and serve for city dwellers . food is unsafe from their truck. One meal at a restaurant gives five free meals to those who are unsure about food, according to Hamm.

Hamm added that it is also a way to repurpose food waste while countering criticism in the press. He was also haunted by reports of unbearable minimum wages for staff, which he refused to talk about when asked by Side Dish.

Away from the kitchen, the divorced father of three, who dropped out of school at 14, left home at 15, and had his first child at 18, has been linked to billionaire philanthropist Lauren Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and actress Demi Moore. (His love life was another subject he refused to delve into.)

Hamm’s passion for plant-based cooking has made him the epitome of those who kicked off the new year by celebrating Veganuaria, a global campaign that commits people to a vegan lifestyle for 30 days.

“Restaurants are embracing Veganuary like never before, from corner wine cellars to Michelin-starred restaurants like Eleven Madison Park,” said Wendy Matthews, the nonprofit’s U.S. Campaign Director.

Launched in 2014, just 3,325 people pledged to go vegan for a month. That number jumped to 400,000 during the pandemic and to 629,000 last year, Matthews said.

We hear … There’s still time to squeeze in the best of the holiday season from the city’s most creative chefs and restaurateurs. Pop-ups abound and holiday décor is everywhere, including at the Magic HOUR rooftop lounge at the Moxy Hotel with its Instagram après-ski carousel and Macabee’s Hanukkah bar in the West Village.