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THE EXCHANGE
T
HE FIRST TIME Daniel Humm moved to
London, in 1992, he didn’t have a job. A
16-year-old high school dropout, Humm was
training to become a professional moun-
tain-bike racer in his native Switzerland when he
decided to follow his then-girlfriend, Elaine Mathieu,
to London for the off-season. Having completed a
stint in the kitchen at Zurich’s renowned Baur au Lac
hotel, Humm began looking for work as a cook. He cir-
culated his résumé among London’s grandest hotels,
including The Dorchester, The Savoy and Claridge’s,
the stately Mayfair address that has lodged royals,
dignitaries and celebrities since the mid–19th century.
Claridge’s hired Humm as a stagiaire, and for the
next six months, before the start of the 1993 racing
season, he chopped vegetables for mirepoix, fried
potato chips, sliced bread for tea sandwiches and
once spent four days straight peeling tomatoes for
tomato confit. “We had no worries in the world,”
Humm says. “None.”
Humm, now 43 and one of the world’s most
renowned chefs, is landing in London once again,
returning to Claridge’s with his first European res-
taurant, Davies and Brook. “It’s wild,” Humm says. “I
used to work in the basement.” Patrick McKillen, who
helms the Maybourne Hotel Group, which includes
Claridge’s, calls Humm’s full-circle journey poetic.
The restaurant’s opening this month, however,
comes with an unexpected twist for Humm. Davies
and Brook will mark the first time the chef will launch
a new restaurant without restaurateur Will Guidara,
his erstwhile partner in Make It Nice, the hospitality
group the duo built together and anchored by buying
New York’s Eleven Madison Park for between $7 mil-
lion and $8 million from Danny Meyer in 2011. Humm
and Guidara, who met in 2006 when Meyer hired
them to run EMP’s kitchen and dining room, respec-
tively, announced their separation in July.
As partners, Humm and Guidara guided EMP,
their flagship, to three-Michelin-star status and
to the top position on the 2017 World’s 50 Best
Restaurants List, while also launching outposts of
their acclaimed Manhattan NoMad restaurant in
Los Angeles and Las Vegas. (A fourth NoMad will
debut in London next summer.) Made Nice, their fast-
casual concept, opened its doors in 2017, and a series
of seasonal EMP offshoots in the Hamptons and in
Aspen popped up at various points over the past few
years. Their 2017 overhaul of EMP’s dining room and
kitchen was the subject of an episode of 7 Days Out, a
documentary series on Netflix; and they’ve published
four books together.
As compelling as their portfolio has become,
and as novel as their artful integration of cooking
and service has been regarded, it’s been Humm and
Guidara’s close, public friendship—a brotherhood, in
their words—that has, until recently, sustained their
relationship and their business. Describing the for-
mation of their partnership, Humm and Guidara told
me i n a n i nter v iew for t h is ma gazi ne i n 2016 (t he yea r
in which WSJ. honored them as Food Innovators) that
their initial 2011 contract had been handled more like
family law than like a merging of business assets.
“One of us gets paralyzed, the agreement is that thatBY HOWIE KAHN PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBBIE LAWRENCE
This month, chef Daniel Humm launches his first solo
and European endeavor at Claridge’s, after parting ways
with his longtime business partner, Will Guidara.LONDON CALLING
FOOD NETWORK
STANDING TALL
“I’m in a really clear place,” says
Humm, photographed outside
Claridge’s, where he will open
Davies and Brook this month.
“Clear about our restaurants,
about our culture, about my kids
and my life outside of work.”WSJ. MAGAZINEperson is totally taken care of,” Humm said in 2016.
Guidara recalled during that same interview that he
and Humm had fought a fair amount in the beginning.
“But we never go to bed angry,” Guidara said. “That’s
a thing.” Humm added that they’d never questioned
the strength of their bond: “When we hear about
partnerships between two people that don’t work
out, it’s just a reminder of how precious this is.”
At the beginning of this year, according to both
Humm and Guidara, significant differences in their
business outlooks and creative focus arose. Humm
says he thought that he and Guidara might hold each
other back from accomplishing their own personal
goals. “We didn’t see eye to eye on certain things,”
says Humm, “and it felt like it was time to go our
separate ways and for him to fully express himself
and for me to fully express myself.” The duo spent
much of 2019, they say, attempting to bridge the gap
before ultimately deciding that they would disband.
While beginning to formalize their separation this
summer, Humm and Guidara decided to leave Make It
Nice whole, with Humm buying Guidara’s side of the
business for an undisclosed sum. Humm says that
EMP’s current investors will support the business, as
will new investors whom he would not name.
“It’s bittersweet,” Humm says. “We’ll always be
brothers.” Guidara expresses a similar sentiment
as he sets out to build a new hospitality group and
expand Welcome, a series of curated conferences and
talks, launched in 2014, that aim to bring hospital-
ity education and inspiration to people within the
industry and to a wider audience. “Inevitably, rela-
tionships evolve,” Guidara says. “I’m excited about
my next chapter, but I’m sad to not be around for the
opening of projects like Claridge’s that we all worked
on for years together.” In addition, Guidara will no
longer be a part of 425, a new fine-dining restaurant
on Park Avenue that has been in the works for several
years and is slated to begin service in 2020.
Recently, over lunch at Manhattan’s abcV, Humm
says he prefers talking about his work, his creative
process and the restaurant
he’s about to open. “With
Will,” he says, “maybe it
would be more interesting
if there was some kind of
scandal, but there’s not.”
Despite the recent shake-
up, Humm comes across as
mellow, collected, focused
and quick to laugh. Over
various dishes from the
restaurant’s vegetarian
menu, Humm, whose diet
is largely plant-based, describes having recently
returned from private meditation sessions at the
Hawaiian home of spiritual leader Ram Dass. Humm
has had a regular meditation practice for nearly a
decade; he says that, aside from guided breathing,
he and Ram Dass spent time discussing the perils of
ego and moving toward an existence of increased
“loving awareness.”
Davies and Brook, Humm says, marks a kind of
homecoming that’s both professional and personal.“As much as I love America,” he says, “I am European,
and I have this special relationship with London. My
heart is there in a big way.” The restaurant, named for
its cross streets, will serve lunch and dinner and will
seat 80, including outdoor options when the weather
holds. Humm says the food, with a focus on British
ingredients and inspiration from his travels to places
such as India, will be as refined as the dishes at EMP,
but he wants the restaurant to be casual enough for
repeat visitors to feel at home. He hopes regulars
come once a week rather than once a season.
Billy Peelle, EMP’s former
general manager, and Dmitri
Magi, its former chef de
cuisine, have moved to London
to run Davies and Brook’s
front and back of house; and
Leo Robitschek, the Make It
Nice bar director, will over-
see the beverage program. As
at EMP, Davies and Brook’s
interior has been designed by
architect Brad Cloepfil’s firm,
Allied Works. An art enthusi-
ast, Humm likes to include work by close friends in
his dining rooms. EMP features a painting by Rita
Ackermann and conceptual sculpture by Daniel
Turner; Davies and Brook will showcase Mother,
Wonder, a 40-part work comprising individually
framed photographs taken in the south of Iceland
by the multimedia artist Roni Horn, who says her
friendship with Humm propelled her to hang work
in a restaurant for the first time. “He does beautiful
things, and he’s truly passionate about art,” she says.“He pursues it like he pursues his own profession.”
As lunch ends, Humm orders a second cappuccino
and ponders the changes at hand. “At the end of the
day,” he says, “work is stressful at times. Whose work
isn’t? What I can tell you is that I’m in a really clear
place. Clear about our restaurants, about our culture,
about my kids and my life outside of work.” Humm
has two preteen daughters, who live in Los Angeles
with his ex-wife, Geneen Wright, and a 24-year-old
daughter with Mathieu who works in hospitality
in Switzerland.
When asked whether his contentment with his
personal life has anything to do with Laurene Powell
Jobs, whom he is reportedly dating, Humm responds:
“I don’t want to talk about it. I guess as a business
grows, you have to make sure you protect certain
things.” (He does, however, confirm that she is not
an investor.)
Humm takes another sip of his cappuccino.
“Working with Will all these years, we lived by this
[Willem] de Kooning mantra: ‘[You] have to change
to stay the same,’” he says. “We don’t always know
what that leads to, but we always have to evolve.
Sometimes it’s the food that evolves; sometimes it’s
the service; sometimes it’s us.”
Humm leans in closer. “That’s life,” he says.
“That’s beautiful if you’re prepared for it.” BRITISH MADE “As much as I love America,” Humm says,
“I am European, and I have this special relationship with
London. My heart is there in a big way.” Davies and Brook
dishes, including (clockwise from top left) hot and cold oys-
ters, an apple cider doughnut, radishes with triple crème and
avocado with trout roe.“WITH WILL, MAYBE
IT WOULD BE MORE
INTERESTING IF
THERE WAS SOME
KIND OF SCANDAL,
BUT THERE’S NOT.”
–DANIEL HUMMEVAN SUNG