Cabbage, yams star on Alain Ducasse menu
Don’t look for caviar on the US$475 menu at the pop-up featuring Ducasse and EMP chef Daniel Humm working side by side
Daniel Humm and Alain Ducasse are chefs who know the meaning of luxury dining. Between them, they run restaurants that hold 24 Michelin stars, including four with three stars — the shiny summit of dining in the guide’s world. Their establishments are outfitted with acres of crystal glasses, uncreased linen tablecloths and towering floral arrangements. A purse stool hidden under a table at Ducasse’s Le Meurice in Paris might cost over US$10,000 ($13,440).
Still, at the two chefs’ four-night pop-up at Humm’s Eleven Madison Park in New York, the featured ingredients stand at the other end of the fine dining spectrum. The stars of the US$475, 10-course dinner are sweet potatoes and plantains, green cabbage, and squash.
The storied chefs first teamed up for four nights of dinners at Le Meurice in Paris. Humm and Ducasse spoke with Bloomberg Pursuits at that menu’s launch late in January.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the duo’s pop-up menu represents an extension of the philosophy Humm has embraced since he reopened Eleven Madison Park in summer 2021. First, no meat or animal products are served. “It was clear that we would cook plantbased,” says Humm, adamant that he will never again serve meat at Eleven Madison Park. For his part, Ducasse was an early adaptor to luxurious vegetarian cooking; he first started offering the Le Jardins Provence menu at his seminal Le Louis XV restaurant in Monaco in the 1980s.
The most important thing for both chefs is redefining what a high-end meal should consist of. There was a time, Humm observes, when “luxury ingredients had to be Kobe beef topped with caviar”. Now, such ingredients are ubiquitous: Kobe is touted as the base for burgers you can find at your local restaurant, and caviar is the goto garnish for everything from martinis to burrata. Humm has set himself to create luxurious entrees without them. “It’s about moving things forward, being trendsetters, being creative,” says the Swiss-born chef who replaces prime beef with ingredients such as a carrot in a tartare, which has earned him renown.
“You have to have an element of surprise” in fine dining, says Ducasse through a translator. “Dishes become much more seductive because you don’t know what you’re tasting. You taste meat, but there’s no meat. That’s the future.”
The chefs created alternating courses for the event, making the most of the produce available at Manhattan’s Union Square Greenmarket in February, along with some favoured ingredients. One of Ducasse’s dishes pays tribute to red beets: A layer of spicy beet ketchup is topped with beets in multiple guises — preserved, lacto-fermented, pickled—doused with tiger’s milk flavoured with tart rose hip paste and then crowned with seasonal leaves and sprouts and puffed and fresh amaranth.
Another of his dishes highlights green cabbage skewered with citrus pickles, accompanied by beer caramel and a sauce flavoured with bitter hop oil. (Ducasse has not completely turned his back on classic luxury ingredients: Black truffles garnish his roasted squash and pickles dish.)
Humm’s dish selection features one with sweet potatoes and plantains, ingredients he has not used at Eleven Madison Park. The base of the dish is roasted sweet potato topped with plantain and sweet potato masa lightly tempura-fried with a feathery crisp crust. It is finished with habanada chilli romesco and coffee powder.
Humm also resurrected a popular dish from a past EMP menu: a skewer of mushrooms with seitan and sansho. The entree is a mix of mushrooms confit grilled with fried cubes of the glutenous protein seitan and then glazed; it greatly pleased Pursuits editors when they tasted it before Eleven Madison Park’s anniversary dinners in October.
For Ducasse, plant-forward food is an important step in the evolution of fine dining: “Naturel-ness in cuisine, that’s the direction we’re taking. Putting a focus on cereals with sustainable fish proteins, that’s definitely the orientation.”
In the meantime, switching to a plant-based menu has drawn a new audience for EMP. “Our clientele has gotten a lot younger,” says Humm. “Their definition of luxury has certainly changed.” He uses the phrase plant-based rather than vegan. “This topic has become political, and people want to put you in a box. The world has to change, and you need to make some mistakes with change. It’s about progress more than perfection.”
The Daniel Humm-Alain Ducasse pop-up at Eleven Madison Park ran from Feb 20–23.
Here are six highlights of the 10-course menu from Humm and Ducasse:
• Red beetroot / amaranth / sweet pepper
• Cauliflower with tonburi and pita bread
• Fried sweet potato with plantain, lime and chili
• Roasted squash / parsley / gherki / black truffle
• Braised green cabbage / hop / Buddha’s hand
• Mushroom skewer with seitan and sansho kosh