They say you feel it within the first five seconds.

Before a single course is fired, before a drink is poured or a menu even touches the table, there’s a distinct hum that hits you the moment you walk through the doors of Eleven Madison Park. It’s an atmospheric shift — the sound of a high-performance machine calibrated so precisely it barely registers as noise at all. For Chef Daniel Humm, who has spent two decades treating this Art Deco dining room as a living laboratory, that sensation is what he calls “the magic.”

As the doors swung open for me on a Friday afternoon, I caught the uncanny current immediately. It wasn’t just the light cutting across the view of Madison Square Park; it was the energy of the staff, which itself refracts throughout the room. There’s a particular kind of hospitality here, one that doesn’t feel transactional, but rather anticipatory: everyone already knows what’s about to happen and can’t wait to let you in on it. It’s an infectious feeling, and a rare space where visitors are guaranteed a hit of frisson upon each visit.

Hypebeast was at the restaurant to meet Humm ahead of a milestone moment. To mark his 20th anniversary at Eleven Madison Park — an almost unthinkable tenure in an industry defined by high turnover and reinvention — he has assembled a retrospective menu that reads less like nostalgia and more like a living archive. Think of it as a “greatest hits” exhibition you can actually eat.

After leaving San Francisco, Humm arrived at the restaurant in 2006 as an employee. By 2011 he owned the place, and by 2017 he had steered it to the #1 spot on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list with three Michelin stars to boot. And while our conversation touched on iconic dishes he’s invented over the years such as the Honey Lavender Duck (2006) and the Milk and Honey (2010) dessert, our conversation kept returning to the humble root vegetable that changed the trajectory of the city’s culinary scene.

In the long arc of New York dining, few would have placed their bets on a carrot becoming a “grail” ingredient. Yet Humm looks back at the Carrot Tartare (2012) as the dish that truly changed everything — not just for himself as a chef, but for the city’s understanding of what fine dining could be. It was a radical reimagining that took a year of failed meat-based trials before a breakthrough was achieved utilizing the soil of the Hudson Valley. For Humm, the carrot proved that “magic” isn’t found in the rarity of an ingredient, but in the ability to elevate unexpected, seemingly quotidian materials in such a way that they become art.

The carrot was the spark that led to his radical 2021 plant-based pivot and his current “post-modern” era of inclusive, thoughtful dining. Whether he is celebrating the simplicity of an onion or reintroducing thoughtfully-sourced animal proteins in 2026, Humm is still obsessed with those first five seconds of wonder that define a dish, a bite, a sip.

Hypebeast sat down with Daniel to discuss the evolution of the “hum” which continues to define his kitchen after all these years, the discipline required to survive a 20-year grind, and what it’s like to look back at your life’s work one plate at a time.

You often talk about “creating magic” for people. Where is that magic actually found?

Daniel Humm: It’s in the soul of the place. For 27 years, people have sat around these tables with a real openness to receive an experience. Great hospitality and great chefs have an incredible generosity of spirit. We work with ingredients grown in the earth, use our hands to prepare them, and then we share it. When someone walks out of here with an experience they will never forget — that energy is felt within the space.

You started here as an employee in 2006 and now you own the entire institution. How has your perspective changed?

It’s funny because before I owned it, I kind of acted like I owned it. Now that I do own it, I try to act like I don’t. You have to keep the fun in it. The responsibility can be daunting and can actually kill creative thinking. You have to separate yourself from the “owner” persona to keep playing creatively.

Why do you point to the Carrot Tartare as the dish that truly changed Eleven Madison Park?

Because it proved we could create a “grail” dish out of the most humble ingredient. We tried to make an iconic New York tartare for a year — we tried beef, venison, everything — and we almost gave up because nothing felt contemporary. Then I was in the Hudson Valley with a farmer obsessed with carrots. I came back with a box of them and we realized that was the answer. It showed that magic isn’t in the rarity of the ingredient, but in the elevation of it. If we can elevate an onion or a carrot to three-Michelin-star heights, how cool is that?

How do you determine if a dish is ready for the EMP dining room?

We live by four fundamentals that we developed in 2017:

Deliciousness: It has to be delicious in a way where you don’t have to think about it.

Beauty: It must be a beauty that feels effortless, not like it took 50 chefs to plate it.

Creativity: Every dish must add a new element to the dialogue of food.

Intention: It has to make sense that it exists — it needs real roots or a story.

You went fully plant-based in 2021, but recently reintroduced meat. Why the change?

Creativity is about building, but it’s also about destruction and rebuilding. Eventually, the “plant-based only” rules no longer served us. We realized we were keeping people out. I love food and I want to continue to explore without being put in a box. We want everyone at the table. We’re reintroducing these ingredients with a new, much more thoughtful view — foundationally, our cuisine has changed forever.

You often say you approach the kitchen like an athlete. Does that still hold true 20 years in?

Absolutely. This restaurant is so full-on; you have to have that mentality to survive it. Being a chef is a physical sport. The biggest gift of these 20 years is that I’ve never stopped enjoying the push. We keep evolving and challenging ourselves, which is what keeps the team bonded and the work interesting.

Eleven Madison Park is famously guided by 11 words inspired by Miles Davis. Which one is most important to you in 2026?

“Endless Reinvention” and “Cool.” Fine dining can’t be stuffy or pretentious; it has to be cool to stay relevant. We constantly question what fine dining today should look like.

Why don’t you play music in the kitchen?

Because the kitchen makes its own music. There is a specific sound to the dining room — the voices, the clinking — that tells me if everything is in sync. It’s like when I go for a run: on the days everything feels in sync, I don’t need music because my breathing and the ground become the music. When that “hum” is off in the kitchen, I know something is wrong.

You recently started “Magic Farm,” a collaboration with Maciek Kobielski where you grow the produce for your kitchen upstate. How has that changed your relationship with the ingredients?

It makes you aware of how beneficial it is to get an ingredient straight from the source. We want that level of perfection for everything — our duck is raised an hour from here, and our seafood is all local, from the clams to the fish from Montauk. We are closer to perfection in that philosophy now than ever before.

After 20 years, what is left to conquer?

Transitioning from just serving guests to using this platform for good. Whether it’s through [the NYC-based nonprofit] Rethink Food, which we founded to address food insecurity, or being an ambassador for UNESCO, the goal is to bring the message of a better food system to the world. I believe the best chapter for this restaurant is still yet to come.

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