The restaurant, designed by Bentel & Bentel, is located in the Metropolitan Life North Building, facing Madison Square, at the intersection of Madison Avenue and 24th Street. The restaurant originally opened in 1998 and was owned by restaurateur Danny Meyer. In 2006, Chef Daniel Humm and Will Guidara began working at Eleven Madison Park and in 2011 they purchased it from Meyer. Humm and Guidara also own and operate the NoMad restaurant in the NoMad Hotel, opened in 2012, and Made Nice, a counter-service restaurant in Manhattan. Their restaurants are under the Make It Nice group. Eleven Madison Park was closed for renovation between June 9 and October 11, 2017, mainly to revamp the kitchen which had not been updated in nearly 20 years. The restaurant closed again during the COVID-19 pandemic, instead producing meals for the food-insecure in New York City in cooperation with the non-profit Rethink Food. Humm has said reopening may prove prohibitively expensive, putting the future of the establishment in question.
Menu
The restaurant offers guests one multi-course tasting menu inspired by the agricultural bounty of New York and its culinary traditions. This concept has come under occasional criticism. In 2015, Tanya Gold wrote of the menu, "It is not, to me, food, because it owes more to obsession than to love. It is not, psychologically, nourishing. It is weaponized food, food tortured and contorted beyond what is reasonable; food taken to its illogical conclusion; food not to feed yourself but to thwart other people."
Cookbooks
The Eleven Madison Park Cookbook was published in 2011; Humm and Guidara have released additional cookbooks including: I Love New York: Ingredients and Recipes, The NoMad Cookbook, and Eleven Madison Park: The Next Chapter.
James Beard Foundation Award – Outstanding Service, 2016; Outstanding Chef, Daniel Humm, 2012; Outstanding Pastry Chef, Angela Pinkerton, 2011; Outstanding Restaurant, 2011; and Best Chef: New York City, Daniel Humm, 2010
S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants – Ranked #50 in 2010, #24 in 2011, #10 in 2012, #5 in 2013, #4 in 2014, #5 in 2015, #3 in 2016 and #1 in 2017.
Zagat – Rating of 28 in food, decor, and service in 2014. This makes it the top-ranked restaurant in the Flatiron District and one of the best restaurants in New York City.
