Does NYC's Eleven Madison Park restaurant have a private room for meat eaters?
The elite restaurant charges hundreds of dollars per customer
New York City's Eleven Madison Park restaurant reportedly still sells meat to diners in a private room even after announcing in May that it would go almost totally vegan.
In a scathing critique from The New York Times, restaurant critic Pete Wells wrote Tuesday that meat was still on the menu for a select few.
NYC ELITE $335 PER-PERSON RESTAURANT TO DITCH MEAT, GO VEGAN UPON REOPENING
"Until the year ends, the menu offered to customers who book a private dining room includes an optional beef dish, roasted tenderloin with fermented peppers and black lime," he said. "It’s some kind of metaphor for Manhattan, where there’s always a higher level of luxury, a secret room where the rich eat roasted tenderloin while everybody else gets an eggplant canoe."
The Madison Avenue establishment reopened its doors to customers in June after a 15-month hiatus.
In a letter on the restaurant's website, Swiss-born owner and chef Daniel Humm wrote that post-COVID-19 pandemic it was clear that they "couldn't open the same restaurant in early June."
"With that in mind, we made the decision to serve a plant-based menu. We asked ourselves: What are the most delicious aspects of our dishes, and how could we achieve the same level of flavor and texture without meat?" he wrote, admitting that "at times I woke up in the middle of night thinking about the risk we were taking abandoning dishes that once defined us."
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"It is time to redefine luxury as an experience that serves a higher purpose and maintains a genuine connection to the community," Humm added.
In a May interview with NPR, he said the pandemic had gotten him thinking about sustainability.
"The way we have sourced our food, the way we’re consuming our food, the way we eat meat, it is not sustainable," he told the outlet.
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However, the eatery would still serve milk and honey for coffee and tea.
The 10-course vegan meal at Eleven Madison Park costs $335 per person and the restaurant holds three Michelin stars, four stars from the New York Times, seven James Beard awards and a 2017 honor as the best restaurant in the world.
While Page Six said Wednesday that it had exclusively obtained the private dining menu that offers a number of meat dishes, a spokesperson for Eleven Madison Park told FOX Business in an email Thursday that the menu that was published has not been offered to private dining room guests since March 11, 2020.
"Early in September, we made the decision to transition the private dining room to be entirely plant-based by January 1, 2022," they said.
This story has been updated with comment from Eleven Madison Park