Eleven Madison Park Keeps All Three Michelin Stars as a Fully Plant-Based Restaurant

Eleven Madison Park in New York has kept all three of its Michelin stars after going fully plant-based, making it the first plant-based restaurant in the world to hold the guide's highest honor.

The 2022 Michelin Guide New York was revealed last night (Thursday, October 6) at a ceremony on Manhattan's west side. Eleven Madison Park was one of just five New York restaurants to keep three stars, alongside Le Bernardin, Masa, Per Se and Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, reports Time Out.

This was the big test. Chef Daniel Humm reopened the restaurant last summer with a fully plant-based menu, replacing dishes like its famous lavender duck with a $335 plant-based tasting menu. (The one exception: milk and honey are still offered with coffee and tea.) Plenty of critics said he was throwing away the stars. Michelin's inspectors visited anonymously between spring 2021 and summer 2022, when the plant-based menu was in full swing, and decided it was still exceptional cuisine "worth a special journey".

Humm said:

We took the jump to transform Eleven Madison Park into a plant-based fine-dining restaurant knowing in our hearts that this is what we believed in.

And in a post on Instagram, Humm and his team added:

Last night, we were honored to be awarded three Michelin stars for the 11th year in a row. I am so beyond grateful to the team that's with us here now and every member who contributed through its nearly 25-year history. We are also grateful to our guests and partners who believed in our vision and encouraged us to push harder.

Meanwhile, in a twist you couldn't make up, the same guide stripped the legendary 135-year-old Peter Luger Steak House of its Michelin star. We'll just leave that there.

This matters well beyond one very expensive dining room. Top chefs set the direction for everyone else, and Eleven Madison Park has now proved that plants can compete at the very highest level of cooking in the world. That's an argument every chef, caterer and home cook can learn from. Oxford University researchers found that a global shift to plant-based diets could save more than 8 million lives by 2050, and it turns out the food can be world class too.

We were thrilled when Eleven Madison Park ditched meat and went fully plant-based last year, and when ONA became the first vegan restaurant in France to win a Michelin star. Since then the Golden Globes served a 100% plant-based menu, and just last week the city's public hospitals made plant-based meals the default. New York is leading by example from the hospital tray to the tasting menu.

Three stars, zero animals on the plate. The future of fine dining is here.