One of the world’s best restaurants — NYC’s Eleven Madison Park — is going meatless

“The way we eat meat, it is not sustainable,” chef Daniel Humm said of the decision.

Chef Daniel Humm stands for a portrait inside his restaurant Eleven Madison Park in 2017. The highly acclaimed Manhattan restaurant Eleven Madison Park announced on Monday that it would no longer serve meat or seafood when it reopens next month.Benjamin Norman/New York Times

Say goodbye to Eleven Madison Park’s foie gras, pigs’ bladders, and honey lavender duck.

The world-renowned, three-Michelin-star restaurant will reopen next month with a plant-based menu, chef Daniel Humm announced Monday. That means the New York City spot, housed inside the Met-Life Building, is leaving meat and seafood behind when it welcomes guests again after being closed since last March because of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Milk and honey will still be on the table for coffee and tea service.)

Humm told multiple outlets the decision is inspired by an effort to be more environmentally friendly.

“The way we have sourced our food, the way we’re consuming our food, the way we eat meat, it is not sustainable. And that is not an opinion. This is just a fact,” Humm said in a recent NPR interview. “So we decided that our restaurant will be 100 percent plant-based.”

Menu details are forthcoming, but the switch will not affect the restaurant’s price tag: It will retain its hefty pre-pandemic cost of $335 for a multicourse meal, with gratuity included.

Still, Eleven Madison Park is not the first of its kind. Chef Dominique Crenn took meat off the menu at her award-winning San Francisco restaurants in 2019. L’Arpège in Paris created a meatless menu back in 2001, and New York chef Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy has been serving up vegetable-focused meals for 13 years.

Of the 132 restaurants worldwide with three Michelin stars, such as Eleven Madison Park, none is vegan. But Michelin gave one star to Ona in France this January, making it the first fully vegan restaurant to receive the honor.

Diti Kohli can be reached at [e-mail]. Follow her on Twitter at @ditikohli_.