judge on Beat Bobby Flay) but considers
his restaurants to be “the purest form”
of himself. “If he does not have someone
running finances,” Flay adds, “he can-
not be successful—cannot.” Restaurant
partnerships, like any marriage—in the
classic European tradition, they were
marriages—depend on a shared vision
of the future and growth.
Often business partnerships outlast
actual marriages, not surprising in a pro-
fession where relentless hours and work
make it hard to keep a marriage or family
alive. Many successful chefs have divorces
on their résumés. “I had a son born the
year before we opened,” says Tom Colic-
chio, the Top Chef star and food-justice
activist, of the memorably brilliant kitchen
he ran at Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern from
1994 to 2006. “By the time he was two, I’d
split up with his mother. Things are strange
when you don’t spend any time together.”
Humm could tell a similar story: After hav-
ing a daughter at 19 with a woman he fell
madly in love with at 14, he had two more
daughters with a woman he married while
building and running Eleven Madison
Park before they amicably divorced.T
HE IMPERTURBABLY GENIAL Meyer
explains his 2011 separation from
Humm and Guidara a bit differ-
ently. He is sitting in the meeting area
of the headquarters of his global Shake
Shack colossus, in lower Manhattan,
radiating his usual gyroscope-steady
cheer. “They wanted to buy their entre-
preneurial liberty,” he says. “You would
have to say that Daniel has zero capacity
to compromise his standards.”
Meyer, who keeps working even after
a $1.6 billion IPO of Shake Shack because
“I need to feel incompetent every day,”
says his own definition of fine dining has
evolved to “experiences that feel celebra-
tory.” But “one thing that hasn’t changed:
What I most crave is belonging. Restau-
rants, more than ever, need to make me
feel recognized, cared for, and valued.”
Colicchio questions the star-striving
trappings of fine dining but nonetheless
respects Humm’s pursuit of perfection.
“It’s like listening to jazz,” he says. “I
don’t love it. But if you listen to it, really
listen, you learn.” Eleven Madison Park
is where Colicchio does his listening. “I
find what Daniel is doing very exciting,”
he says. “I hate sitting through three to
four hours, but once a year I’ll do it. If you
care about food, you cannot not go there.”felt his inner voice becoming clearer
and clearer. It said that commercial
success—which he proudly says he has
always avidly pursued, because artistic
vision doesn’t mean much in an empty
restaurant—wasn’t as important as “get-
ting to the place where I can create what
I want to create.” He feared turning into
a brand—and losing control of it. So he
found an investor he had long known
(not Powell, he says firmly) to help him
buy out Guidara. Initially that put Humm
in charge of EMP, Davies and Brook, and
the Make It Nice group, which is now
planning a new Manhattan restaurant at
425 Park Avenue; in late January, Humm
withdrew from NoMad, ceding operations
to his former hotel partners. “At the end of
the day, we just could not see eye to eye,”
Humm said in an Instagram post about
the break. Guidara, who plans to open his
own restaurants in New York, told me by
email: “I’m incredibly proud of what we
built together and know that a piece of me
and my approach to service and hospital-
ity will always remain at Eleven Madison
Park and the other restaurants. But over
the last few years, our visions around how
we wanted to run the restaurants were no
longer aligned, so we made the decision
to go our separate ways.”
A
WORKING BUSINESS partnership
is essential for any restaurant to
stay alive. “The most important
thing for a chef is to make good food and
run his kitchen staff,” says Bobby Flay,
who can write his own ticket thanks to
TV celebrity (I am occasionally, and
delightfully, pressed into service as a
“It’s like listeningto jazz,” says chefTom Colicchioabout fine dining.“I don’t love it. Butif you really listen,
you’ll learn.”