Chef Daniel Humm Still Has Questions About What’s on Our Plates

Ye Fan

Daniel Humm reminds me of my Swiss grandmother.

I’m at Magic Farms in upstate New York sitting across from the lauded Eleven Madison Park chef, a table topped with gazpacho, torn bread, and glasses of white wine between us. We’re joined by Maciek Kobielski, a dear friend of Humm’s, and the farmer whose family's land we are on. A gentle summer rain is kissing the soil outside, nourishing the sunflowers and plump tomatoes that will soon travel several hours south to New York City, and land on the plates of diners willing to shell out $365 for a 9- to 10-course tasting menu at Humm’s iconic plant-based restaurant.

It’s July, and I’m one of the few people who know that Humm will soon be announced as UNESCO’s first-ever Goodwill Ambassador for Food Education, a role built on years of advocating for more sustainable food sourcing. He drizzles olive oil atop our gazpachos as he describes the elegance of farm-to-table produce—contrasting it with traditional markers of luxury dining, like caviar whose production has become increasingly less natural ("there's nothing luxurious about caviar today,” he says, waving a hand dismissively)—I can’t help but think about my maternal grandmother's similar celebration of simple, nutritional ingredients in her cooking, and her refusal to allow trends, or flash for flash’s sake, to sway her belief that “real” food was the finest food.

Humm, who is originally from Strengelbach, Switzerland, but has lived in the US for decades, pauses then smiles when I ask if it’s a Swiss thing, this way of viewing simplicity and a closeness to nature as the ultimate refinement when it comes to eating. “I grew up in Switzerland with hippie vegetarian parents, and they were insane, always playing around with these different diets,” says Humm. “I thought my parents were so weird, and I would go to school with my lunch in a glass Tupperware container. Later on, I realized how lucky I was—they were fermenting nuts, and grains, and we were composting like 40 years ago.” Humm’s parents might have been more extreme than some, he admits, but “Switzerland is light years ahead” of countries like the US when it comes to sustainable food systems. This type of eating, he says, isn’t just about living well, but about a responsibility to the planet. And it's time more of us caught on.

This thinking is innately linked to Humm’s growing emphasis on plant-based eating and sustainable food sourcing, marked by the 2021 decision to transition Eleven Madison Park from the foie-gras-slinging kitchen it once was to an entirely vegan operation (though he doesn't love that word, “vegan,” but more on that later). It was a move that surprised, outraged, annoyed, and certainly confused many (particularly fans of dishes like his famous lavender-infused duck).

The change was essential in his eyes. “You don't need to be a climate expert to know that we’re fucked, and what's on our plate is the most meaningful impact an individual can make,” says Humm. “I wanted to do the right thing, for sure—but also, if my job is to find the best ingredients, those ingredients are no longer animal products.”

Even if it has taken him a moment to reach this point, Humm has of late been spreading his gospel to anyone who will listen. If you’ve dined at Eleven Madison Park since the plant-based shift, tucking into dishes like Japanese cypress seeds arranged like roe, and your table has received a visit from the chef, you may know the spiel. When I ate there last November and the chef stopped by during dessert, the subject turned to turkey—and Humm rattled off numbers on the potential carbon reduction if every American household decided to forego their Thanksgiving birds for the year. (Shortly after, I texted my friends suggesting a root vegetable tian as our main for the holiday.)

Humm doesn’t like to sound preachy, he tells me, as we shrug on light jackets and head out to the damp fields of Magic Farms alongside Kobielski. He doesn’t expect everyone to become vegans (“vegans suck,” he says with a wink, before earnestly dissecting why it turns so many people off). He just wants to share information on where our food comes from, and let the facts do the rest.

Perhaps it's this way of his, of framing planet-first eating as something special, and elegant, rather than a chore, that led UNESCO to knock on his door. “Daniel Humm is much more than one of the world’s most gifted chefs,” says UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay about his new ambassador appointment. “He is a passionate advocate for sustainable nutrition, who has staked his career on his beliefs, defying the skeptics, and proving to us all that the finest cuisine can be an ally in protecting our precious planet.”

I ask Humm how his current advocacy will evolve, or expand, in this new role. The Goodwill Ambassadorship focused on Food Education is a first, and unique for an organization best known for its work protecting physical historical sites like the Angkor Wat and the Taj Mahal. What does that even look like?

Humm says that’s the exciting part—figuring out the details—and just a few things are certain at this stage. For one, his platform is about to get much bigger. “I always have had bigger roles outside the restaurant before," he says. And in Eleven Madison Park's dining room, “we touch 100 people every night." But that's just 100 people he can try to share his plant-based thinking with, whereas a bigger mic means a quicker dissemination of the message.

According to Azoulay, Humm's new role will take him to international stages on UNESCO’s behalf, including at the next COP for biodiversity in Colombia this October. Plus, he’ll pay visits to UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, connecting with others who are boots-on-the-ground in food and sustainability work. Humm's first visit this past summer was to the Shelburne Farms, part of the Champlain Adirondack Biosphere Region, where he met with farmers and school children to discuss climate-positive food systems. He hopes to travel to regions with a long culture of plant-based eating, and identify sustainable approaches that can be applied elsewhere (Japan and Peru are both mentioned to me as places he wants to keep learning from).

When I think of the storied traditions of the shojin ryori diet in Japan, built on centuries of tofu production and foraging, or the cultivation of thousands of varieties of indigenous potatoes in the Andes, I understand how traditional food systems warrant the same attention and protection as historical landmarks in a world barreling toward industrial farming on a global scale. “Through the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, we have already worked to better promote and protect 730 practices around the world,” adds Azoulay. “Many of them are linked to food: whether this means agricultural techniques such as rice transplanting rituals in Mibu, Japan; know-how for the preparation of dishes, for example in traditional Mexican cuisine; or practices that determine how we eat these dishes, such as the gastronomic meal of the French.”

Looking around the fields at Magic Farms, I can see how Humm's work has already moved well beyond the kitchen. Kobielski, who dips to pluck Thai basil from the garden and offer it to Humm and I while musing on his current irrigation techniques, was best known as a big-city fashion photographer for 25 years until a pandemic pivot—at Humm's suggestion—sent him into agriculture. (“You can only imagine my family when I told them, I'm gonna grow veggies,” he says.) After months of studying under seasoned local experts, Kobielski now farms these lands, learning with every season, to cultivate more than half of the produce Eleven Madison Park uses today. His pivot like Humm’s plant-based menu sounds drastic, until you realize they’re just building on knowledge others have built over many, many generations.

“My hope is that some of our work, and I know it's happening, trickles down,” says Humm. “I'm just interested in touching as many people as possible with this vision—I have a responsibility.”

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler