A Vegan Restaurant Bites the Dust

We do not, as a rule, write about food on this blog. First, I am not a gourmet and do not aspire to be one. Second, I do not know much of anything about the topic. And yet, I wrote about food yesterday and today will do it again. Hopefully, you will find it all to be in good taste.

OK, not quite. Today I want to share some of the wonderful prose stylings of the New York Times food critic, by name of Peter Wells. His review yesterday was is tart, acerbic and generally witty. It’s the kind of writing that the British do well, but that our own countrymen and women cannot seem to master. Cheers to the New York Times for publishing something worth reading.

Tom Wolfe’s take down of the pretensions of Leonard and Felicia Bernstein was a classic of the genre. It recounted a time when the dimwitted hyper rich on Park Avenue decided to be politically woke. The Bernsteins threw a party for the Black Panthers, yesterday's version of BLM. As it happened, Wolfe was not invited, but he attended anyway. He skewered the pretension and the ignorance that suffused the Park Avenue Bernstein abode. If it sounds familiar, it should. Still, the article, entitled “Radical Chic” dates to five decades ago. 

Anyway, the object of the Pete Wells wit today was a restaurant called 11 Madison Park. It is very tony and quite expensive-- $335.00 per person. It includes tax and tips. It does not include the wine pairings, which run to $175.00 per person.

The restaurant has received three Michelin stars, which is a lot. I suspect that the good people at Michelin will remove one or two of those stars the next time its ratings come out..

For the record, I once had lunch at 11 Madison Park before it became reincarnated as a vegan joint, and the meal was, dare I say, good but uneventful.

And yes, the use of the word "reincarnated" was intentional.

The interesting point, much noted in the media, about 11 Madison Park is that the chef, one Daniel Humm had some kind of epiphany of wokeness and decided to introduce an all-plant, all-vegetation menu. Not only can diners get fleeced by overprice carrots and broccoli, but they can feel like they are saving the planet. Eat plants; save the planet. Catchy, don't you think.

You see, Humm wanted to show that plants could taste just as good as protein infused chicken, fish and beef. So, one of the most expensive and generally excellent restaurants in the world went all-in for climate change. If you go to Humm’s joint now you can feel all virtuous for saving the cows and the fish and the fowl. Does that improve your appetite?

Then again, the stick thin New York women that Tom Wolfe used to call human x-rays can now feel that when they go to 11 Madison Park they are not larding on the calories. Another blow for virtue.

Anyway, I do not subscribe to the New York Times, so I rely for the review on the portions excerpted in the Daily Mail. What would we do without the Daily Mail?

The story begins with the sad tale of a “dehydrated beetroot dish.” In all honesty I have no idea of what they might entail:

But New York Times critic Pete Wells had little time for a dehydrated beetroot dish served in a clay pot that is broken open at the table, saying that it 'tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.'

But, Wells was just getting warmed up. The Daily Mail continued:

But on Tuesday, the restaurant critic for The New York Times, Pete Wells, delivered his damning verdict, saying some of the dishes had a 'pumped-up, distorted flavor', while others had a 'cloying heaviness'.

The vegetables, Wells said, were 'doing things no root vegetable should be asked to do', and he accused head chef and owner Daniel Humm of manipulating the ingredients far beyond necessary.

'Some are so obviously standing in for meat or fish that you almost feel sorry for them,' he wrote.

‘The ingredients look normal until  you take a bit and realize that you’ve entered the plant kingdom’s uncanny valley.’

He might have said, unhappy valley-- which would have referred us to Dr. Samuel Johnson-- but, you can’t have everything. I trust that he was consciously trying to avoid the Johnsonian reference.

About a tomato dish, Wells had this to say:

The tomato dish, served alongside a tea with lemon verbena, salad with strawberry and shiso, and a yellow tomato dosa, was described by Wells as having a 'pumped-up, distorted flavor, like tomatoes run through a wah-wah pedal,' a device used by musicians to distort the sound of an electric guitar.

The article continues:

Cucumber with melon and smoked daikon - a dish, which takes two cooks all day to chop and prep, due to the short shelf life of the fresh cucumber - was dismissed by Wells as being 'suffused with an acrid intensity'.

And a roasted eggplant, which used to be flavored with tuna flakes, was said to have a 'cloying heaviness'. 

It led Wells to this recommendation:

 'Maybe he should bring back the celery root steamed in a pig bladder.'

Not wanting to seem entirely negative, Wells heaped praise on the bread:

His highest praise was reserved for something not on the menu - the bread.

'Originally kneaded with cow butter, the laminated dough has been rejiggered with butter made from sunflower seeds, and it's an unqualified success,' he wrote. 

'So is the nonbutter that arrives with the bread, molded into the shape of a sunflower, bright yellow with a dark eye of tangy fermented sunflower seeds in the center.'

And then there is the kicker-- every snide, sarcastic column needs one-- the restaurant does serve meat to those who are really, really rich. It serves it in a private dining room. One suspects that this room functions like a speakeasy, a place where you can go to eat the good stuff while everyone else is munching on the dandelion seeds:

He also noted that there was meat served for the highest-paying clients, at a private dining room, with that policy set to continue until the end of 2021. 

'It's some kind of metaphor for Manhattan, where there's always a higher level of luxury, a secret room where the rich eat roasted tenderloin while everybody else gets an eggplant canoe,' he said. 

Perfect-- tenderloin for the wealthy, an eggplant canoe for the hoi polloi. And yet, in this case, the hoi polloi comes from Park Avenue and is paying an absurd price for food that is obviously lacking.

So, the 11 Madison Park foray into vegan wokeness is a failure. It is very unlikely that the menu will survive the Wells evisceration. Better yet, all the the obscenely wealthy burghers who have been eating there and who have been praising it to the sky will wake up and discover that they have no taste and that they have egg on their faces. And the egg will not be vegan either.

Because, I promise you, wealthy New Yorkers have been dining out on their 11 Madison Park experiences for several months now. They have been drooling over the wondrous beetroot glop. Now, the New York Times-- a publication whose authority compares with that of Scripture-- has told them what to think and they are certainly not going to contradict the New York Times.

Will 11 Madison Park survive in its current form? The jury is still out. And yet, we know that when Tom Wolfe wrote his essay on “Radical Chic” five decades ago, Leonard and Felicia Bernstein suffered mightily, socially speaking. Exposed as self-righteous, pompous fools for sucking up to the Black Panthers, they lost considerable prestige and social standing. And yet, it was only a prelude to the damage that would be inflicted on poor Lenny when it was discovered that he had been seducing his male students at Harvard. The indignity of it all.