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“Reading Room”

This week, I highly recommend reading John Colapinto's "Annals of Gastronomy" piece on Will Guidara and Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park and The NoMad in The New Yorker. You may think you know fine dining, but you'll understand its challenges all the better after this inside look at what goes on behind the scenes at these restaurants.

The article explains how the co-owners of the Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park have managed to maintain their reputation for reinvention and quality while cutting costs. The restaurant, praised for its fresh approach to fine dining, “is booked twenty-eight days in advance, with a waiting list of a hundred and fifty people a night—a rare circumstance when many formerly successful places are closing,” Colapinto writes. But in 2009, at the height of the recession, Will Guidara, the general manager and co-owner, tells Colapinto, “we were losing money.”

Daniel Humm, the restaurant’s chef and co-owner, and Guidara tell Colapinto about the changes they made during the recession to save money, such as doing away with paper chef’s toques (which cost twelve thousand dollars a year) and cutting paper towels in half. But they didn’t compromise on the food, and continued to strive for a fourth star from Frank Bruni, who was at that time the restaurant critic for the Times.

On days when they ascertained that Bruni was coming, they called up friends to pack the sparsely populated restaurant, and Bruni tells Colapinto that he was unaware of the restaurant’s troubles: “Eleven Madison Park just oozed from every one of its pores the fact that it was a place where a number of extraordinarily young and talented people were determined to make their mark.” In 2010, Guidara and Humm instituted a series of changes that have been both financially and stylistically successful, such as paring the menu down to just sixteen items to eliminate waste, taking diners on a kitchen tour and a visit to the restaurant’s cocktail lounge to encourage table turnover, and cultivating a casual approach to fine dining that elides “what Guidara calls the ‘business-transactional’ nature of the visit, to draw customers’ attention away from the fact that they were disbursing enough money to buy a week’s groceries for a family of five,” Colapinto writes. While Humm and Guidara strive for creativity and consistency, “we understand that, without making money, we can’t stay open,” Humm tells Colapinto. “That’s why we are really driven to make money. It’s going to end if you don’t.” Guidara adds, “But if you ever make a decision first and foremost to make money, it will end as well. Every decision needs to start with it making you better. And then you have to ask yourself, ‘Is this also a good financial decision?’ ” 

Great article.

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