The long wait’s over for the “new” Eleven Madison Park after a four-month closing for a reboot — and it was worth putting up with the long summer of suspense.
EMP, as many fans know it, has changed its colors more often than the leaves outside its mullioned windows. But the great restaurant’s own foliage has never dazzled as it does today. A major redesign and subtle tweaks to the menu and service weave a tapestry of pleasures more seamless than before — well worth the $295-a-head (including tip) minimum tab for those fortunate enough to afford it.
I don’t know whether Eleven Madison Park is the “world’s greatest” place to eat, as the controversial but much-followed World’s Best Restaurant list proclaimed it earlier this year. But it sure served me the greatest early-bird special I’ve ever had — a 12-course tasting menu that started at 6 p.m., a time I had to take because demand is so strong.
Owner Will Guidara and chef/owner Daniel Humm had a lot of history on their shoulders. Danny Meyer launched EMP as a giant American brasserie in 1998. The menu became more esoteric when Swiss-born Humm took over the kitchen in 2006, and, in 2010, Humm and then-general manager Guidara switched to a prix-fixe-only menu. They bought the restaurant from Meyer the following year and introduced a baffling “grid” menu. They later dropped it, but then turned dinner into a much-ridiculed dinner spectacle where waiters performed card tricks and delivered New York food history lessons about dishes that appeared out of clouds of smoke.
The stunts and spiels were gradually pared back, but not banished, up to the time it closed in June. I’m happy to report that the closest thing to a lecture I heard was a waiter’s word that Humm got the idea for a pumpkin dish “when we were on a bus passing by all these pumpkins” coming back from their pop-up EMP Summer House in East Hampton.
“I think the New York theme is still present,” Humm tells us of dishes with obvious local inspiration such as heart-stoppingly luscious cauliflower cheesecake with Idaho sturgeon, and meal-opening “black and whites” that are tiny savory sandwiches of cheddar cheese and apples.
“We thought it was important to be screaming it off the mountain top at first,” he said of the much-criticized history lessons. “Maybe we overdid it a little,” he chuckled.
Architect Brad Cloepfil’s redesign is airier, buzzier and even more comfortable. A cozy lounge replaced the Siberia-like bar. Bulky credenzas were yanked. Banquettes and booths, once black and straight, sport gentle curves and muted earth tones.
The front dining area, previously at the same level as the entrance, gains drama from being two steps up. The first is no ordinary step, but a black, 20-foot-long hunk of hollow metal made entirely from melted-down elements of the original kitchen. Such self-referencing might drive you crazy at any other restaurant, but at EMP, it doesn’t dim the romance. It certainly didn’t for the gorgeous couple who entwined their scarily tattooed arms over two bottles of wine.
The prix-fixe menu is more flexible than a standard tasting. Of 12 courses, one offers four different choices; two others offer two choices; and the third, dessert, offers three. Nearly all the dishes are new.
Adorably composed amuse-bouches arrive in a stack of hexagonal wooden boxes that the waiter disassembles into separate units containing delectable, fall-themed items such as a roast chestnut that oozes black-truffle mousse inside.
Humm says of his restless, hard-to-define style that mostly shuns trendy molecular technique, “I’ve finally found myself.” I don’t know what that means, but presentations are eye-pleasingly simple. Delectable, mushroom butter-poached lobster comes with a potato-and-chanterelle-mushroom tart. Honey- and lavender-glazed duck and dry-aged veal, dishes of elemental power seething with autumn spice, come with pinwheels of five-color potatoes. A “cheese course” offers savory pretzel bread crowned with cheese fondue served with a bottle of Brooklyn-made beer with Amagansett sea salt.
Boasting three Michelin stars in addition to its “world’s best restaurant” accolade, EMP had nothing to prove. It took guts for Guidara and Humm to roll the dice recasting a place that needed no reinvention — but they’ll be coming up sevens and elevens for a long time to come.
