Today, Humm calls himself a “search-
er of beauty”—his idea of time well spent
when not running marathons or work-
ing out is driving north to see a new
show at Dia Beacon; his closest friends
include the artists Roni Horn and Rita
Ackermann, whose work played large
conceptual roles in his reinvention of
Eleven Madison Park and at Davies and
Brook, in London’s Claridge’s hotel. Their
work appears in his apartment near Cen-
tral Park (good for training runs), which
is austerely beautiful with a minimal-
ist’s design, just like his plates. He rec-
ognizes the pretense of a chef calling
himself an artist—“Get over yourself,
it’s fucking food”—but he clearly thinks
like one. Every new project, he hopes,
will bring him closer to his dream of
creating what the Bauhaus artists called
Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art.
It was art, he says, or the separation
of art and commerce, that led to his
two business splits: first when he and
Guidara bought the Eleven Madison
Park business from Meyer, in 2011, and
the recent break with Guidara. Humm
explains them as buying his creative
freedom, which he says “I’ve always
their names to far-flung restaurants. The
question was which offers to take.
After a months-long renovation of EMP
in 2017, Humm spent seven life-changing
weeks meditating in India, out of his com-
fort zone, he says, every minute of every
day. He came back determined to radically
“edit” his life—a new cell phone, hundreds
of names out of his address book. Every-
thing was open to question.
The trip led somewhere he never could
have predicted: to Laurene Powell, “the
most incredible person I have ever met”—
founder of the social-change organiza-
tion Emerson Collective, majority owner
of The Atlantic, and widow of Steve Jobs.
India, he says, helped him find himself
as a chef and a person, and gave him a
“perspective and clarity” that put him on
a “path that led me to her.” Powell, he says,
has “allowed me to see myself more clear-
ly, and I get to be more myself by knowing
her. She inspires me every day.” (This is
the first that Humm or Powell has publicly
commented on their relationship.) The
timing, the meeting, the being together:
“It’s kind of magical.”
On top of the “incredible energy and
partnership and love” he describes, he“I’ve always beenwilling to riskevery th i ngto have creativef r e e d o m,”Humm says.TASTEMAKERS
Will Guidara and Daniel Humm, in 2017,
in the Eleven Madison Park kitchen
where a picture of Miles Davis hangs.been willing to risk everything to have.”
The success of NoMad, he says, allowed
him and Guidara to hire more people to
support future projects at Eleven Madi-
son Park. Combined with the awards
EMP kept winning, it also brought them
constant offers to expand, to open vari-
ous food and wine businesses, to give