Eleven Madison Park, Madison Avenue, New York City

At my age it’s getting hard to stay up long. So after a transatlantic flight, I had a reservation at the revered Eleven Madison Park at 10 in the evening. After staying awake and lying that my non-existant wife got ill, since they don’t take single person reservations, finally my big moment came.

The pictures of the meal are pretty bad and grainy & I also was too tired to take any notes. Still since the place just moved up a couple of notches in its international standing, I’ve decided to write about it.

The food is whimsical, shows great technique & product knowledge and (I’d never thought I’d say that) is actually funny. I’ll focus on the three things I recall as being outstanding in this meal. The meal ended and started with a black & white cookie, one savoury, one sweet. A great idea to show respect to the local traditions and skill to evolve classic dessert treat into an amuse bouche. The clam bake course reminded me of a great oyster I had at Noma, whimsical, playful & delicious.

But the funniest thing was, that echoing Mr. Humm’s personal heritage the word “Chueflade” was mentioned on the menu (jump to the last picture). At the end of the meal I asked the maitre d’ wether he knew what that was and he went into a long explanation that this is a red-smear cheese from Switzerland. When I smiled and insisted if he knew what the actual word meant he didn’t know. When I explained that it’s swiss german for cowpat, he started laughing and said he needed to have a serious word with the chef, since he wasn’t told about that.

I’ve been asked wether I prefer Schauenstein over Eleven Madison Park or vice versa and I honestly can’t make up my mind. I’ll simply have to revisit both.

Oh yes and if you want a signed copy of a cookbook, slipping a 50 dollar bill to the maitre d’ goes a long way. You just got to love America!