Daniel Humm is the Swiss chef-owner of Eleven Madison Park in New York City, a three-Michelin-star restaurant that he has led since 2006 and owned since 2011. Born in Switzerland on 21 September 1976, Humm earned his first Michelin star at 24 as executive chef at Gasthaus zum Gupf in the Swiss Alps, moved to the United States in 2003, and became executive chef at Eleven Madison Park in 2006. He has held three Michelin stars at the restaurant since 2012.
In 2021 Humm relaunched Eleven Madison Park with a completely plant-based tasting menu. The restaurant became the first and only plant-based restaurant in Michelin Guide history to hold three Michelin stars when the 2022 guide confirmed the rating. In October 2025 the restaurant reintroduced select animal proteins as an optional course choice alongside the plant-based menu. Eleven Madison Park was named The World’s Best Restaurant in 2017. Humm was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for food education in September 2024.
TL;DR
- Swiss chef born 21 September 1976; based in New York since 2003
- Chef-owner of Eleven Madison Park (executive chef since 2006, owner since 2011)
- Three Michelin stars since 2012, retained continuously
- First plant-based restaurant in history to earn three Michelin stars (October 2022)
- The World’s Best Restaurant 2017; UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for food education 2024
Daniel Humm key facts
| Born | 21 September 1976, Switzerland |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Main restaurant | Eleven Madison Park, 11 Madison Avenue, New York City (executive chef since 2006) |
| Michelin stars | Three at Eleven Madison Park since 2012 (retained every year) |
| Style | Plant-based fine dining with optional animal proteins (since October 2025) |
| Notable awards | The World’s Best Restaurant 2017; six James Beard Foundation Awards including Outstanding Chef |
| Other ventures | Clemente Bar (2024); Daniel Humm Hospitality; Eleven Madison Home; Rethink Food (nonprofit co-founder) |
Early life and training of Daniel Humm
Humm grew up in Switzerland and began his culinary training at a young age. He was an endurance cyclist as a teenager and has often spoken about the parallels between competitive cycling and the discipline of a professional kitchen. He trained through the Swiss apprenticeship system in several of the country’s leading hotels and restaurants across the 1990s.
At 24 he became executive chef at Gasthaus zum Gupf in the Swiss Alps, where he earned his first Michelin star, one of the youngest chefs in Switzerland to do so. The Gasthaus zum Gupf period built his reputation in European fine dining and set up his move to the United States. In 2003 he was recruited to become executive chef at Campton Place in San Francisco, where he received four stars from the San Francisco Chronicle and established himself in the American fine-dining scene.
In 2006, at age 30, Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group recruited him to become executive chef at Eleven Madison Park, a restaurant in a historic Art Deco building on Madison Square Park in Manhattan. He met front-of-house manager Will Guidara at the same time, and the two would partner to transform the restaurant across the following decade.
Daniel Humm career timeline
- 21 September 1976: Born in Switzerland
- Late 1990s: Swiss apprenticeship and stages across leading hotels and restaurants
- c. 2000: First Michelin star at Gasthaus zum Gupf at age 24
- 2003: Moves to the United States as executive chef at Campton Place, San Francisco
- 2006: Becomes executive chef at Eleven Madison Park in New York
- 2011: Humm and Will Guidara purchase Eleven Madison Park from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group
- 2012: Eleven Madison Park earns its third Michelin star
- 2012: Humm and Guidara open NoMad New York (one Michelin star, James Beard Award)
- 2017: Eleven Madison Park named The World’s Best Restaurant (The World’s 50 Best Restaurants)
- 2018: Opens NoMad Los Angeles
- July 2019: Humm buys out Guidara, becomes sole owner
- Late 2019: Opens Davies and Brook at Claridge’s in London
- 2020: COVID-19 closure; transforms Eleven Madison Park into a community kitchen with Rethink Food, producing up to 3,000 meals a day
- November 2021: Leaves Davies and Brook after Claridge’s rejects a proposal for a vegan menu
- June 2021: Reopens Eleven Madison Park with a completely plant-based menu
- October 2022: Eleven Madison Park becomes the first plant-based restaurant to hold three Michelin stars
- October 2024: Opens Clemente Bar, a cocktail bar and tasting counter on the second floor of Eleven Madison Park
- September 2024: Appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for food education
- October 2025: Eleven Madison Park reintroduces select animal proteins as optional courses alongside plant-based menu
Daniel Humm signature style: plant-forward fine dining
The defining decision of Humm’s recent career was the June 2021 relaunch of Eleven Madison Park as a fully plant-based restaurant. He has explained the shift as a response to climate change, overfishing, and the environmental footprint of industrial animal agriculture. He prefers the term “plant-forward” or “pro-planet” to “vegan,” and has framed the menu as an argument rather than a restriction: that the language of fine dining carries cultural weight, and that the most celebrated restaurants have a responsibility to demonstrate what the future of food could look like.
In October 2025 the restaurant evolved again. Alongside the fully plant-based tasting menu, guests can now choose a menu that includes select animal proteins including fish, meat, and the restaurant’s signature honey-lavender-glazed duck. Humm has framed this not as a retreat but as an invitation: giving more people access to the plant-forward argument rather than making the commitment all-or-nothing. Both menus remain built around seasonal produce from Magic Farms, the dedicated partner farm Eleven Madison Park has used since 2021.
The culinary vocabulary Humm has built over the plant-based years draws on Japanese and Indian vegetable traditions, Middle Eastern aromatics, fermentation, long dehydrations, and heavy use of Japanese techniques adapted to North American produce. The restaurant’s service remains classical: Art Deco dining room, multi-course tasting menu, formal front-of-house. The ingredient base has changed; the fine-dining register has not.
Notable dishes at Eleven Madison Park
Several Eleven Madison Park dishes have become reference points in American fine dining. The honey-lavender-glazed duck, carved tableside and served with roasted vegetables, was the restaurant’s most celebrated signature during the pre-2021 era and returned as an optional course in October 2025. The beet reinterpreted as a main course, brined, roasted and glazed to approximate the texture of cured meat, was the standout of the 2021 plant-based relaunch. The olive bread laminated with sunflower butter opens every current meal and has become a signature. The seasonal vegetable courses change with Magic Farms’s rotation and have ranged from tomato-on-tomato presentations in peak summer to root vegetable compositions in deep winter. Dessert is anchored by the Eleven Madison Park chocolate course, which has iterated over fifteen years.
Daniel Humm awards and recognition
- c. 2000: First Michelin star at Gasthaus zum Gupf, Switzerland (age 24)
- 2003-2006: Four stars from the San Francisco Chronicle at Campton Place
- 2012: Three Michelin stars at Eleven Madison Park
- 2012-present: Four stars from The New York Times
- 2017: The World’s Best Restaurant (The World’s 50 Best Restaurants)
- Six James Beard Foundation Awards, including Outstanding Chef and Outstanding Restaurant in America
- October 2022: First plant-based restaurant in Michelin Guide history to hold three stars
- September 2024: UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for food education
- 2025: Three Michelin stars retained at Eleven Madison Park for the 13th consecutive year
Daniel Humm impact on contemporary fine dining
Humm’s most concrete contribution is the demonstration that a plant-based menu can operate at the highest level of fine dining without sacrificing Michelin recognition. When Eleven Madison Park earned three Michelin stars in 2022 as a fully plant-based restaurant, it was the first time in the guide’s history this had happened. Michelin international director Gwendal Poullennec has called Humm and Eleven Madison Park a “North Star” for younger chefs navigating the direction of gastronomy. The decision reshaped the global conversation about what top-tier fine dining could be.
The second contribution is the Rethink Food model. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Humm and his team partnered with Rethink Food, a nonprofit he co-founded, and transformed the Eleven Madison Park kitchen into a commissary producing up to 3,000 meals a day for first responders and food-insecure communities in New York. The restaurant produced over 1,000,000 meals across the pandemic and continues to donate excess ingredients and a portion of reservation revenue to the organisation. The model has been studied by fine-dining kitchens globally as a way to reconnect with the cities they sit in.
His generational peers in the top tier of American fine dining include Grant Achatz at Alinea in Chicago, Corey Lee at Benu in San Francisco, and Dominique Crenn at Atelier Crenn, also in San Francisco. All four hold three Michelin stars and represent different paths: Achatz’s avant-garde theatre, Lee’s cross-cultural precision, Crenn’s poetic French vegetable-forward approach, and Humm’s plant-based environmental argument.
Daniel Humm FAQ
How many Michelin stars does Eleven Madison Park have?
Three Michelin stars, held continuously since 2012. The restaurant has retained its three-star rating every year across the plant-based relaunch in 2021 and the October 2025 reintroduction of optional animal proteins. It was the first plant-based restaurant in Michelin Guide history to receive three stars in the October 2022 guide.
Is Eleven Madison Park still plant-based?
From June 2021 to October 2025 the restaurant served an exclusively plant-based tasting menu. Since October 2025 guests have a choice: the fully plant-based menu remains available, or they can choose a menu that includes select animal proteins, such as fish, meat, and the restaurant’s signature honey-lavender-glazed duck. Humm has framed the change as widening the audience for plant-forward cuisine.
When did Daniel Humm become a three-Michelin-star chef?
Eleven Madison Park earned its third Michelin star in 2012, six years after Humm became executive chef and the year after he and Will Guidara bought the restaurant from Danny Meyer. He had earned his first Michelin star at age 24 in Switzerland, well before moving to the United States.
What is Rethink Food?
A New York City-based nonprofit that Humm co-founded to address food insecurity and the environmental impact of industrial food systems. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Humm turned Eleven Madison Park’s kitchen into a Rethink Food commissary producing meals for frontline workers and food-insecure communities in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The partnership continues today through ingredient donations and reservation-based fundraising.
What is Clemente Bar?
A cocktail bar and tasting counter that opened in October 2024 on the second floor of Eleven Madison Park. It is the second venue under the Daniel Humm Hospitality umbrella and offers a more accessible entry point to Humm’s cooking and beverage programme.
What is next for Daniel Humm
Following the October 2025 menu evolution at Eleven Madison Park and the continuing Clemente Bar programme, Humm has announced a new restaurant at 435 Hudson Street in the West Village, signed in 2024 and expected to open in the coming period. His UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador role continues to drive public work on sustainable food systems. He has published five books, including Eleven Madison Park: The Plant Based Chapter (2024). His public Instagram (@danielhumm) is the best source for current updates.
