Daniel Humm Out At Claridges Over Vegan Menu

Oops

I also found out recently that I’m vegan-intolerant.

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Pardon my ignorance, but I’m curious. Do ultra high end vegan menus have similar prices to to to those involving top proteins. Are there vegetable equivalents to caviar or Waygu beef, etc? Obviously a large part of top restaurant pricing is staff and overhead but ingredients are a factor. Is there any impact on restaurant bottom line, eg if profit is a given margin on turnover.

Yes, they have similar prices.

At Grace (a 3 Michelin star restaurant in Chicago, now closed), we were given a vegetarian menu and a meat menu and both were the same price. We were told we could sub courses from the other menu, if so desired. I appreciated the flexibility.

Humm’s new vegan menu at Eleven Madison Park is $335 per person. Can’t recall what exactly it cost before they turned vegan, but this is in the same ballpark.

My buddy (that I usually go out for steaks with) loved the new vegan menu. Impressed that they made 10+ courses with tons of umami without just serving mushrooms or truffles to create that flavor. He did say he’s not sure often he would return due to being skeptical there is a lot more that can be done with vegan food, but I guess we’ll see.

I am tempted not to eat my salad tonight, but just have Sotheby’s sell it at auction.

The Vegan reopening of eleven mad got somewhat brutalized by the Times food critic.

I have heard from a source that I 100% trust that the new menu is a significant improvement and quite wonderful. I can’t wait to go.

George

Having eaten at Arpege, if you put that amount of passion into terroir of vegetables, i can see it costing a pretty penny… And frankly, the meal is as good as any meal i’ve had despite having 10 courses of veggies (with 2 courses of meat/seafood at the end before dessert). Complete mastery of veggies, it was eye opening.

A person I really respect says the fall menu at 11 Madison is amazing. I don’t care if it is vegan or all meat. If it tastes good and is worth the $335, I am in.

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Your post compelled me to take a look at the review. Noteably, Wells thinks that many of the vegetable dishes were better before because they were truer to how the vegetable is supposed to taste. Like the celery root puree. Beets should taste like beets and not something else, etc. I can understand that to some extent…I do not understand vegan substitutes trying to replicate chicken nuggets for instance.

But like Don, I am open-minded to this menu because of Humm’s bonafides.

This. Exactly.

George

I would also trust a friend over any reviewer.

Wasn’t Charlie Trotter doing this a long time ago?

So what about Heston Blumenthal’s carrot and beet dish?

Richard, that’s not familiar. Is this the lollipop dish? If so, presumably there is some good veggie flavor there. But then I also don’t mind olive oil ice cream and stuff like that.

If you are referring to Charlie Trotter’s vegetable menu… sort of. It actually wasn’t even vegetarian. It used meat based stocks etc.

George

Over-all, the ‘parting ways’ announcement was pretty classy.

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