Making Dining Great Again

One NYC Fine-Dining Restaurant Learned the Hard Way That Virtue Signaling Doesn’t Pay

Chris Queen PJ Media:

One of New York City’s most prestigious restaurants made a decision to become even more exclusive a few years ago, and its chef has finally realized that it was a bad choice. It took four years for the tony Eleven Madison Park to see the error of its ways.

In August, Eleven Madison Park’s Chef Daniel Humm announced that the restaurant was bringing meat back to the menu after a little over four years as a completely plant-based establishment. That’s right: a $375-a-plate restaurant spent nearly half a decade as a vegan joint.

 Humm spoke to the New York Times:

“I very much believed in the all-in approach, but I didn’t realize that we would exclude people,” he said. “I have some anxiety that people are going to say, ‘Oh, he’s a hypocrite,’ but I know that the best way to continue to champion plant-based cooking is to let everyone participate around the table.”

The restaurant has had varying levels of financial success since introducing the vegan menu, Mr. Humm said, but over the past year has found it increasingly harder to sustain the level of creativity and labor required. Bookings for private events, an essential stream of income, have been particularly sparse. “It’s hard to get 30 people for a corporate dinner to come to a plant-based restaurant,” he said.

Translation: We can’t keep up the stunt.

Eleven Madison Park swept into veganism around the same time that other well-meaning leftists fell head over heels for radical social causes. Reviews were mixed at best, and larger parties refused to book at the expensive restaurant. Still, Humm kept a firm grip on the plant-based menu for fear of his fellow virtue-signalers labeling him a hypocrite, despite the difficulties of sustaining it.

“Couching hard-nosed business calculations in a moral epiphany feels apt for Humm, now more celebrity food guru than elite restaurateur, who spends his time whining about the fragile ‘global food system’ and ‘social inequalities’ in between sherpa-guided meditations in the wilderness,” writes Gage Klipper at Spectator World. “There’s an implicit dig in the framing — how could I expect that my clientele just wouldn’t be as socially conscious as I am? — but Humm was about the only one surprised.”

….

Naturally, leftists decried Humm’s move to re-incorporate meat into Eleven Madison Park’s menu. That epithet of “hypocrite” that he feared came around.

“Yesterday, you were the owner of the world’s most famous vegan restaurant. An inspiration. Somewhere vegans could aspire to visit for special birthdays and special occasions,” someone commented on one of his Instagram posts. “Today, you are the owner of just another restaurant. I fell for your act. I thought you cared. You didn’t.”

….

Chef and TV host John Mountain took a different tack from his “culinary hero” Humm. At his Australian restaurant, Fyre, Mountain has banned vegans. In another Spectator World piece — which ran alongside Klipper’s article in the print edition — Mountain says that he knows “a thing or two about what people want to eat — and what they don’t.”

Which is why, two years ago, I banned vegans from my restaurant. I still stand by the post I made on Facebook at the time: “Sadly all vegans are now banned from Fyre (for mental health reasons). We thank you for your understanding. Xx.”

A diner was not happy that I didn’t offer her a vegan option. Things escalated and I banned her tribe. They’re quite a nasty bunch and they’ve been leaving a lot of one-star reviews online, trying to ruin my business. But now I appear to have been vindicated.

Mountain writes about how a friend of his checked out Eleven Madison Park’s vegan menu. When he asked the friend, the man was speechless. Mountain said that the disappointed look in the man’s eyes — as well as his description of everything but the food — told the whole story.

I thought I’d seen a similar tale of a carrot-rejection by a regretful restauranter out in Oh-so-special LA, so I asked Google to find it. Sure enough …

AI Overview

The popular Los Angeles vegan restaurant, Sage Plant Based Bistro, has brought meat back onto its menu, rebranding to Sage Regenerative Kitchen and Brewery. The shift is due to a desire to support regenerative farming practices, which its chef believes are more sustainable, though the restaurant also faced financial struggles after the pandemic. The change was met with criticism from some vegans. 

Reasons for the change

• Regenerative agriculture:

  The owner believes regenerative farming, which includes animal products like bison and beef, is a more effective way to sequester carbon and improve the environment than a purely plant-based diet. 

• Financial viability:

  The restaurant had been struggling with profitability since 2020 and saw adding meat as a way to attract more customers and survive, according to this article from Fox Business. 

• Chef's changed perspective:

  The owner, Mollie Engelhart, stated that she initially believed a vegan diet was the best approach but has since changed her mind after learning more about regenerative agriculture, reports this article from Business Insider.