DANIEL HUMM IS IN THE HOUSE.

Eleven Madison Park’s visionary chef comes to Aria, and it’s been vivid.

Slight departure from the norm this week, to help process how an entirely vegan degustation from a guest chef residency swept me off my feet.

As the number one drawcard of the new food programme for Sydney’s mid-winter Vivid festival, New York’s Daniel Humm has come to town to cook at Matt Moran’s Aria for two weeks ending June 17.

Chef and owner of Eleven Madison Park, he made headlines in 2021 when he switched the entire menu (famous for its lavender-roasted duck) to a plant-based offering.

The risk was enormous. At the height of its success, having been gonged the number one restaurant in the world in the World’s 50 Best held in Melbourne in 2017, the restaurant closed for the pandemic (converting to a kitchen creating meals for vulnerable New Yorkers).

When it re-opened, it could so easily have failed – and indeed, reviews were mixed. But this year, the Guide Michelin awarded the same three stars to the same-but-different restaurant, making it the first vegan restaurant in the world to carry that honour.

“I DON’T LIKE CALLING IT VEGAN”

Says Humm as we settle on a couch in the Aria bar for a chat. “It’s not inclusive. And it’s not encouraging. It’s divisive. It feels as if I am against something, and I’m not against anything.”

So he uses the term plant-based. “But that is also being thrown around way too much” he says. “My hope is that eventually we don’t need to say anything. It just is.”

Rake-skinny, with that accommodating, easy bend that very tall people instinctively adopt, Swiss-born Humm has the same naturally occurring charm as an extremely cute three year-old, which I can only assume he once was. Fitness is important to him, and he’ll hop out for a 10 km run between the lunch and dinner services.

I turned up early for the interview, just as Matt dropped him back after a surf at Bondi. “You went surfing too, Matt?” I asked. I think I heard him snort, being the land-based animal that he is. “I had a coffee instead” he said. Matt is hosting Daniel in such a hospitable and relaxed Australian/family sort of way.

The success of a guest chef residency or pop-up is very dependent on the level of commitment by either side (Humm brought nine staff, mostly chefs). I’ve been lucky enough to experience a lot of these gigs in Australia and at food festivals around the world - and maybe only half of them were memorable.

They work best when it’s the sort of chef who will actually have an impact – not so much on ticket sales, although that is important, but by influencing our thinking and emboldening our own chefs by example. Not just someone on the ‘guest chef circuit’, but a chef with a mission and a purpose. Then there’s a legacy, not just a ‘see you later’. This one comes with quite a purpose.

HOW DO YOU JUST ‘GO VEGAN”?

All my questions to Daniel were about technique. How, given the vegan brief, does he amplify flavours, season, build in the necessary acidity and fatty richness, magnify colours, create new forms, differentiate textures? The answers were fascinating – I received a culinary history lesson, a real glimpse behind the doors, and a masterful demonstration of how to never quite answer the question and get away with it.

When he made the decision to re-open EMP as a plant-based restaurant, there were, he says, more questions than answers.

“What is our pantry? It used to be all the different stocks made of meat and fish and crustaceans, it used to be cream and eggs.  I would walk in there and there was nothing I could use.”

They started to re-build the pantry from the ground up. “We started making all these fermented milks, and almond milks to create culture and acidity – how do we cook without our beloved crème fraiche? What do we do about butter?”

This is what he did about butter.

“There was excitement and tremendous fear, being in your own space like that,” he says. “But there was not much to lose, because we (the restaurant) were closed. This would never have happened if we had been open. Good ideas are very fragile, and the odds of their survival, once shared, is very small.”

A LITTLE BACKGROUND MIGHT BE HELPFUL

Having been a competitive cyclist in his teens, Humm has always brought the intense focus of an elite athlete to the field of cookery, schooling himself in the French cuisine, and particularly the Japan-inflected nouvelle cuisine. He started young, at 15, working in top Swiss restaurants and hotels before moving to San Francisco (Campton Place) and then in 2006 to Eleven Madison Park in New York.

His culinary epiphany came back at the turn of the century, when he first ate at the legendary French restaurant of Michel Bras in Laguiole. One dish, the now famous gargouillou, is simply a natural composition of the small plants and herbs and flowers picked from the fields that morning by the chefs.  “It was the first time I saw a chef be an artist.”

THE CHEF AS ARTIST

Humm has always been drawn to art, he says. “All my friends are artists, painters, sculptors”. His first real experience was at 10 years old, when his parents took him to the Musee de L’Orangerie in Paris to see the Monet water lilies. “I cried.  I didn't know if I was sad, or if I was happy. It was pure emotion.”

What he recognised in Monet, was the revolutionary. “He was ground-breaking. He painted landscapes without any sky. But the sky was reflected in the water”.

It helps make sense of his own intensity, and helped validate the boldness of completely reinventing himself as a chef.

“As I was drawn to all these things, I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to do that in my own field,” he says. “But in the pandemic, I was just sitting there, knowing that we had the best restaurant in the world, and it was closed. Suddenly, I saw a door open, and I just stepped into the space.”

And now, two years on?  “It's been the hardest thing I've ever done. The work itself, creatively, is a tremendous joy, but it’s hard. We are creating an entirely new way of cooking”.

AND THE FOOD, JILL? PLEASE TELL US ABOUT THE FOOD.

What really answers my questions, is eating the food. Terry and I go for lunch, when Sydney harbour is all shiny in the sun, and the room is jumping with energy. The combination of super-professional Aria staff and the energy of New Yorkers such as Eleven Madison Wine Director Gabriel Di Bella keep everything flowing but friendly and not formal.

The dishes go from refreshing to challenging, to comforting, and back again; always with finesse, vibrant colours, distinct flavours, high acidity, and even bitterness. The technique, the craft, is hidden very well, as it is in great art. I’m guessing the broths are built on mushrooms and seaweed, there’s fermentation to give depth and complexity and richness.

We have a crisp truffle tarte flambée – such a nice way to eat a bucketload of new-season Canberra truffles – then a cute little daikon and radish salad (shown above) that looks so innocent, yet hides massive acidity and peppery freshness, served with a warm, mouth-filling tea/broth that was intriguingly sour.

The bread course is almost symbolic, in how it represents the chef’s thinking. It’s butter, but it isn’t. I assume it is oil-based (sunflower?), but it has clarity and smoothness, with that insistent sweetness of onion, very provocative. The bread, laminated and flaky, umami-sweet.

The avocado is the most charming dish, so graphic, so velvety, so clever, with that tiny crunch through the tonburi (Japanese ‘land caviar’) that keeps you coming back for more. It is so perfect, though - it makes me hope that the staff meals this week are all about avocado on toast with the rejected less-than-perfect left-overs.

Humm constantly references art and artists, two of the driving forces of his creativity, and the dishes are painterly.  There is a very zen tofu course that acts to soothe and comfort, visually mesmerising. 

The ‘main course’ is compellingly meaty and chewy and slinky all at once, veiled with tiny mushrooms, and definitely designed to be ‘the red wine course’ that slows you down nicely. Always some haunting citrus – here, lemongrass oil – and added umami – mushroom dust.

Losing track now, but I think zucchini was next; roasted and done in four different ways (no pic). This was the first and only time I was made aware that I was eating a plant-based meal, possibly due to the veil of seitan that cloaked the zucchini.

Flavours are very clear and defined, so the palate never tires. Equally refreshing is the honesty, in that he isn’t trying to recreate the meat-based dishes of the past, but create a new vocabulary, and build something new. His aim is to amplify what is already there, while still applying the French technique and craft he grew up with.

Desserts are pleasant, and prettily plated (the proof of the pudding right here).

THANKS ARE DUE

The entire event was very convincing – more so than any guest chef experience I have had in Australia, when I have often found myself saying “that was good, considering.”

Full marks to all those who helped put it together, from the under-writing NSW Government and Destination NSW, and Gill Minervini, Vivid Festival Director, to the indomitable talent-sourcing IMG Culinary, who hosted lunch, and for the tireless Shannon Blanchard of The Cru Agency. And especially, thanks to all the chefs in the kitchen, both from Aria (headed by Thomas Gorringe) and EMP. It really delivered what it promised - an Eleven Madison Park experience at Aria - and set a new benchmark for chef residencies that won’t be topped any time soon.

WHEN DANIEL HUMM MET DAVIDSON PLUM

Thanks also to D. Humm for carving out time to talk to the young chefs of the National Indigenous Culinary Institute for a Q & A. The questions were telling, eg: “How do you keep going when it gets hard in the kitchen, and you just can’t do it any more, physically or mentally?” His answer: find something that rejuvenates you, to refuel and re-charge. His father always said to him not to live for his time off, but to live for his time on, then the time off will be more rewarding.

Thanks to NICI CEO Nathan Lovett for bringing in some of Australia’s unique ingredients for Daniel to try (just look at that Davidson plum, searingly sour and beautiful) and to Joanna Saville for hosting.

As a proud Board Director of NICI, I’d like to hope Eleven Madison Park would be open to inviting one of our chefs to work with them in New York one day. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful outcome of the Australia/US special relationship???

Seen above L to R: Luke Bourke, Rockpool Bar and Grill Sydney; Aiden Priestley, Rockpool Bar and Grill Sydney; Lizzie Lorente, NOMAD; The Hummer; Nathan Lovett, NICI CEO; Keith Munro, Midden (to open at the Opera House in July); Declan Walsh, Luke’s Kitchen; Ainslie Regan, NICI Program Coordinator; Curtis Lawson, Luke’s Kitchen; and Kilijah Grentell, Infinity/Skyfeast.

KEEP THE PARTY GOING

I realise nobody can now book into the last few days of this, but never fear; we have an Australian equivalent.  For the record, Brent Savage’s Yellow turned vegetarian in January 2016, and came out of lockdown in June 2020 having turned vegan. Next-level vegan, with fabulous snacks, vegetal contrasts, sweet-and-sour surprises – and a wine list that has three pages of gamay alone. I will never forget a dessert of celeriac ice-cream on a chocolate toffee biscuit, with truffle shaved over the top, ever.

Special thanks to Terry for taking the photo of me and the chef; he captured a happy moment. And thanks to Steven Woodburn for the lovely images of the radish dish, and our NICI chefs.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s only fair, folks.