Even after more than two decades in the kitchen, Daniel Humm still knows how to surprise. In June 2021, he ushered Eleven Madison Park — the Manhattan hotspot of which he’s worked at since 2006, and is currently the executive chef and owner — out of the pandemic with a 100% vegan menu. And it wasn’t a change for change’s sake either: in 2022, the establishment became the first (and only) plant-based restaurant to be awarded a three-star Michelin rating.
Even with all that glory, Eleven Madison Park never felt quite finished to Humm. Until last month, that is, when the restaurateur opened the doors to Clemente Bar. Located just one floor above Eleven Madison, the intimate cocktail bar and chef’s counter marks a collaboration between the chef and his longtime friend, the Italian expressionist artist Francesco Clemente. It also serves as a new, simpler entry point into the Eleven Madison universe.
“It’s less of a commitment to come have a drink,” Humm laughs. The traditional menu in Eleven Madison’s main dining room consists of nine to ten courses in a three-hour experience that runs a cool $365 USD per person. The restaurant’s lounge, meanwhile, offers a $225 USD bar tasting menu that still spans five courses and is about an hour and a half commitment. With Clemente, Humm wants to “show a different side of Eleven Madison,” one that doesn’t require a reservation and feels a bit more personal, like inviting a guest into your living room. Creating the bar was a three-year process that originally started with Humm merely wanting to name a drink after Clemente. It wound up being a testament to the friendships the chef has cultivated throughout his life.
In ideating the space, he looked to Zurich’s Kronenhalle Bar as the ideal due to its location (situated within a larger restaurant), look (classic American, intricate woodwork) and art (paintings from Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall). Building out the space saw Humm enlist architect and Eleven Madison alum Brad Cloepfil, as well as a myriad of New York-based artists working across mediums, including the abstract painter Rita Ackerman, sculptor Daniel Turner and famed painter and illustrator Rashid Johnson. Clemente naturally left his mark through two murals on the wall and a fresco on the ceiling. Carsten Höller designed the mushroom-style lamps scattered throughout the lounge, and designer Brett Robinson built custom furniture to compliment a few vintage pieces.
Similar to his vision for Eleven Madison when he took the reins in 2011, Humm wanted Clemente to look and feel distinctly New York. The windowless lounge gives off a cozy feel with dim lighting and wood-paneled walls, more like a den than the airy restaurant downstairs.
“It never felt like we were taking a risk with the bar, because it was just so personal,” Humm says. “I made Clemente with all of the closest people in my life. Everyone really responded to each other and elevated each other. ”
While Clemente may be billed as the quicker, more casual sister to Eleven Madison, the bar offers a subtly extravagant 90-minute tasting experience dubbed The Studio. Only eight people can partake at a time, where, sitting across a low wood banquette, they’ll try five innovative cocktails alongside dishes designed to be eaten using chopsticks.
Those who do, in fact, only want a quick drink can order cocktails, wine and spirits in the lounge. Elevated bar food staples are also available a la carte, such as sake-soaked pickles, thrice-fried potatoes and a block of fried tofu on a potato roll called the Agedashi Dogg. In curating the bar food, Humm viewed taking a backseat to the cocktail menu as a welcome challenge.
“I feel that any sort of guidelines can be a good thing,” he says. “It challenges us like ‘okay, this dish has to be finger food, or this has to be plated.’”
As for the cocktails themselves, Eleven Madison’s beverage director Sebastian Tollius was free rein – the drinks came first, and the food followed, a symbiosis Humm describes as “a cocktail tasting with a food pairing.” Drinks span classics to more unexpected, technical concoctions that list off cherry blossom, tahini, matcha and coconut miso among their ingredients.
As it welcomes the first throngs of visitors, Clemente has already demonstrated it’s not merely an expansion of Eleven Madison but a standalone destination – and a new kind of cocktail bar, one that marries the old school art bar and the upscale New York joint while paying tribute to the Italian artist.
If Clemente Bar itself wasn’t enough of an honorific, Francesco Clemente was also granted his namesake cocktail: the Clemente Martini. Infused with saffron and green curry, it’s Humm’s go-to drink, and a fitting emblem of the painter that inspired the bar.
“It of course has olive in it, which is quite Italian, but then a martini is also a very New York thing,” Humm notes. “With Francesco, there's so much, so much subtlety about him, but there's also so much richness within him.”
The goal is to have the bar achieve the same balance.
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