Daniel Humm opens HUMM, a casual bistro in the West Village
The Eleven Madison Park chef has traded tasting menus for an à la carte wood-fired bistro at 435 Hudson Street, led by his longtime No. 2, Dimitri Magi.
Daniel Humm opened HUMM West Village on 10 October at 435 Hudson Street in Manhattan, a casual, à la carte restaurant that stands apart from his tasting-menu work at Eleven Madison Park.
The room takes over the former En Japanese Brasserie space, redesigned by Pierre Yovanovitch with art from Francesco Clemente and Rashid Johnson on the walls. Reservations opened on 1 October and filled quickly, according to early coverage, well before the first plates went out.
A wood-fired, à la carte kitchen
A wood-fired, à la carte bistro from the chef better known for Eleven Madison Park's tasting menu.
Executive chef Dimitri Magi, who has worked with Humm for 16 years, runs the kitchen day to day. The menu leans modern American and shareable, built around a wood-fired oven and grill: endive salads, oysters and a roast chicken for two anchor early reports, with produce coming in part from Magic Farms, a Hoosick Falls farm about three hours north of the city.
It is Humm's first solidly meat-forward, non-tasting-menu restaurant in New York, a departure for a chef best known for the plant-based fine dining he introduced at Eleven Madison Park in 2021, a switch that drew both praise and complaints from regulars who missed the old menu entirely. HUMM instead reads closer to a neighbourhood bistro, with a bar built around a rolling martini cart and a room meant for walk-ins as much as reservations.
A quieter register after Eleven Madison Park
The West Village has absorbed a string of high-profile openings this year, from Romy's steakhouse replacing Little Prince in SoHo to John Fraser's 35-seat Ondine on Bedford Street, and HUMM lands into a neighbourhood already used to chefs trading grand rooms for smaller, looser ones. The move also fits a wider pattern among tasting-menu chefs, several of whom have opened lower-priced, higher-volume spots in the past two years as fine dining's economics got harder to sustain on tasting menus alone.
Humm has not said whether HUMM West Village will expand beyond New York. For now, the bet is a simple one: that diners who never book Eleven Madison Park's tasting menu will walk a few blocks for a roast chicken instead, and that a rolling martini cart does more for a Tuesday night than a wine pairing ever could.
