Eleven Madison Park: Daniel Humm

Daniel Humm dropped out of school at 14 to become a competitive cyclist, and supported himself by cutting vegetables and making soup stock at fine restaurants in Switzerland. When he eventually realized he'd never become a world-class cyclist, he pivoted to the equally competitive world of fine dining, and soon became a rising young chef in Switzerland, and then San Francisco. In 2006, he was wooed to New York to re-imagine the restaurant Eleven Madison Park, and began drawing raves for his painterly presentations of duck, foie gras, and suckling pig. The restaurant was recognized in 2017 as the world's best, but was forced to shut down during the pandemic. When it reopens in June, it will generate a new buzz in gastronomy: this time by revamping its menu to be entirely plant-based. How I Built This Summit - information and tickets at: http://summit.npr.orgSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 5:25Guy Raz?

  What did that mean? What did the recession mean for a restaurant like 11 Madison Park at that time?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  For us, it hit us really hard. We tried to operate at a four-star level. Like, we had so many meetings where we said, hey, we lost money, like huge amounts. I mean, we had nights where we had four guests in the restaurant.

• 5:54Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:08Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Daniel Hoom dropped out of school at age 14 and went on to become the head chef and owner of the top-ranked restaurant in the world.

• 6:26Guy Raz?

  When a company's entire business model isn't working, it may be time to pivot. We've told countless stories of pivots on this show, from seventh generation going from mail order catalog to manufactured products, to Headspace shifting from meditation events to meditation on an app. Pivots usually happen out of necessity because without the pivot, the company might not survive. But what happens when you make a pivot, a huge pivot, when business is going well, when people actually love what you're doing? Well, that's what we plan to explore on the show today. And the business we're going to talk about, it's not the type of business

• 7:11Guy Raz?

  we usually profile on this show, but in some ways, it's one of the most typical businesses there is because it's a restaurant. Except for the better part of the past decade, it's been harder to score a table at this restaurant, 11 Madison Park in New York, than almost any restaurant in the US. Its owner, Daniel Hoome, is considered one of the greatest chefs on earth. In fact, his restaurant has actually been named the world's greatest. There are Pinterest boards and Instagram accounts dedicated to Daniel Hoome's dishes, like his diamond cut of turbot topped with scales fashioned from baby zucchini.

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  It's a restaurant famed for its foie gras torcheon, duck with daikon and plum, and smoked sturgeon cheesecake with caviar. There are diners who travel from Europe and Asia just to try these things. A few weeks ago, Daniel Hoome reached out to us to talk about a momentous decision he was about to make. And he wanted to talk about it on the show. So while we don't ordinarily focus on news on How I Built This, today's episode has some news. Because on June 10th, when 11 Madison Park reopens for dining after being closed for more than a year due to the pandemic, the restaurant will no longer

• 8:36Guy Raz?

  serve food made from animals. 11 Madison will become vegan, an entirely plant-based menu. Now, to understand how big a deal this is in the food world, imagine Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers leaving the NFL to play flag football. Out of the 135 Michelin three-star restaurants on Earth, not a single one is vegan. Chefs working at the highest levels rely on cream, butter, bones, duck fat, and pretty much anything from an animal to create their celebrated dishes. But something happened to Daniel Hoom over the past year. The pandemic changed

• 9:19Guy Raz?

  his life. It changed the way he thinks about food, and, most importantly, the planet. When his restaurant closed its doors in March of 2020, Daniel quickly converted 11 Madison into a commissary kitchen that prepared hundreds of thousands of free meals for people struggling to make ends meet in New York. This past year, he faced the prospect of personal bankruptcy, the death of friends, and the furloughing of his entire team. He even contracted COVID himself. But, as he tells it, this year also injected a vital sense of urgency into his life. And he decided, there's no going back to the way things

• 10:01Guy Raz?

  were before the pandemic. But before any of this happened, Daniel Hoom was honing his craft in San Francisco and Europe, learning how to be one of the world's great chefs. He grew up in Zurich, Switzerland, and had no real interest in food as a kid, even though, he says, his mom was a great home cook.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was fantastic. My mom was half-French and half-Italian. She absolutely loved to be in the kitchen and to go to the markets.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I didn't learn so much about the cooking part, but I learned a lot about the importance of the best ingredients, like going to a farm and picking up the lettuces and then going home and washing these lettuces.

• 10:50Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  We, I grew up very humble. You know, we would eat meat only on the weekends. So there was this real respect for the ingredients and for the meat as well. And then, of course, we would use every part, make a soup from the bones and so forth. So that was a really great lesson, just to use every part of it.

• 11:14Guy Raz?

  And what about your dad? I, he was an architect, so, I mean, was he?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely a more difficult relationship. Growing up, it seemed like nothing was ever quite good enough. You know, I wasn't good enough in school. I wasn't doing enough homework. I wasn't doing enough work at home to help out my mom. Uh, you know, early on, I started running cross country. I was really good. Um, I was competing in the nationals and I even won the nationals twice. And, uh, but, um, it was always not quite good enough. If I won, then maybe the best other ones weren't, maybe they were injured and they weren't, you know, racing that day. And, yeah.

• 12:02Guy Raz?

  And I read that you also got into cycling as a kid. I mean, you became like a really serious, uh, competitive cyclist, I think, like mountain bike racer, is that right?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. So after running cross country, I, eventually I discovered the bike. And I would, well, first I would just go and, uh, take my bike and I would, some days I would get up at 4:00 AM and I would ride the bike around like into the French part of Switzerland, like and then back and I would come back home at like seven at night. So I was like gone for like hours and hours and hours. And so the sport, actually, it was almost an escape from home. Uh, you know, I started racing, local races, and I was, you know, winning local races and, uh,

• 12:55Speaker 01

  I went from the roads to mountain biking. It became more and more serious. And when I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to join a team and actually to really pursue it as a professional career and sort of leave school behind.

• 13:14Guy Raz?

  So you, at age 14, you left school? You dropped out?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:18Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  You know, it was the best decision for me. Of course, it's now being a parent, thinking about my kids leaving school at 14. I would really be scared. And I understand what my parents were thinking at that time.

• 13:37Guy Raz?

  Your formal education ended essentially when you were 14?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a wild idea. I really only went to school for eight years.

• 13:49Guy Raz?

  I guess you left home. You stopped living with your parents when you were 15.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:55Guy Raz?

  Why did you leave home?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  You know, after I made the decision to be racing, I definitely didn't feel welcome at home anymore. I started having a girlfriend when I was 15. She was, or is, three years older than me. And she had a place of her own. And so then we moved in, or I moved in with her.

• 14:22Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  And I moved away from home.

• 14:25Guy Raz?

  I guess while you were training as a cyclist, you started to just work in restaurants? For money, I guess, initially? Or was it out of interest?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  No, it was purely money at first. There is a well-known hotel in Zurich called the Hotel Boralock. And, you know, I knocked at the door and I was 16 years old. And I asked if I could come and work. And the chef was a big cycling fan. And so he had a soft spot for me. And, you know, I was there just to get a paycheck. But the chef... Really took me under his wing and taught me how to make a consomme and how to make a chicken stock or butcher a chicken.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Or that was really such a gift.

• 15:22Guy Raz?

  Did you have a natural interest in it? I mean, your mom obviously was a good home cook, but I mean, you were into cycling. Like, when you got into the kitchen, was there an instant spark at all? Or is it just that this chef enjoyed talking about his craft?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I definitely felt right at home in the kitchen. But I really didn't think of it as making it as a career. But I was, I felt very fortunate. The chef almost became a little bit of a father figure at that time. And I made great friends as well. And so I felt very at home there.

• 15:57Guy Raz?

  And by the way, you're still living with your girlfriend, who I think, I think when you were 18, you had your first child, right?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 16:06Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  It sounds so, you know, stressful and tough. But it was just such a beautiful time. We were so in love and we had a baby. And it felt like we were doing exactly what we wanted to do. And in a way, so many things were not very complicated. It was a very simple, but beautiful existence. But we were very happy.

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  I guess meantime, as you're training as a cyclist in sort of the mid 90s, you kind of start to work at other restaurants, including some really high end, like Michelin three star restaurants, doing kind of the same thing? Being in the kitchen and doing prep work?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Well, I had a bad accident when I was 22 years old. Bad fall in a, in a mountain bike race. I was in the hospital for a few weeks. And, and then when I was in the hospital, I realized that I wasn't good enough to be one of the very, very world's best. Very few people can actually make a real living just by cycling.

• 17:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And I also realized that I started to have this deep love for cooking. And I think there was one meal I had two years prior. It was at a restaurant called Fredi Girarde, also three stars. And They were probably about twenty five chefs, all like in perfectly starched and pressed uniforms with big hats and they were working so precisely and so calmly and so beautifully. And I think that kind of planted the seed. And I was in the hospital. I sort of was thinking, well,

• 18:05Speaker 01

  if I can't rise to the top in cycling, maybe I could in cooking. And right after that, I found my way to first a two Michelin star restaurant, and then a three Michelin star restaurant. And it became my new sport.

• 18:23Guy Raz?

  I guess around the time when you decided to leave cycling and focus entirely on pursuing like a culinary career, your relationship with your girlfriend, who is the mother of your daughter, Justine, ended. How did you cope with that?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  It was hard. I was twenty five. And so at that time, we were together for ten years. It was just, you know, a very powerful relationship. And have a really great relationship today. But also, I think we were also great parents. I think we just, you grow apart. And I think part of that also led me to eventually move to the US. It was just too painful to be around all the memories we have built in Zurich.

• 19:15Guy Raz?

  So as you, as you kind of began to really pursue this culinary career, clearly you were, you were getting better and better. How did you just gain the confidence of chefs? Did you, was it like our, kind of the caricature of a kitchen? Like people shouting at you and throwing dishes at you? And you like feeling humiliated? And just is that how you learned?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  I mean, there was definitely a lot of that. And it was pretty, an intense environment. People didn't really work together. People didn't really want each other to succeed. And it was this really, really old school way. Like, for example, the chef always would go to the farm every morning by himself at like seven in the morning. We would arrive at eight. And one time I was carrying garden peas and one fell down. And on the way back, I stepped on it and he saw that. I think in the three years that I was there, I think he never forgot that.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  He was so upset because he went every morning to get these garden peas. And he, every single piece, from the tiniest morrel to the tiniest peas, was just so precious to the point where we counted them. It was extreme. It was, it was a pretty extreme environment. Yeah.

• 20:45Guy Raz?

  Did you feel when you were, I mean, because you were one of what 25 or 30 people inside that kitchen?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:51Guy Raz?

  Did you feel when you looked around that it was different than when you looked around at your fellow cyclists? When you looked around at those other chefs, did you think, you know what? I think maybe I, I have the potential to be the best person here.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  I don't know if I thought that at that point in the beginning, it was all about really learning the craft. I definitely felt that I had a gift to do the knife cuts, to make the sauces, to butcher the fish. But at that time, I just wanted to be the best at the craft.

• 21:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  I wanted to be the quickest. I wanted to be the cleanest. And during work, there wasn't really the time to, to write down much. So every night I would go to the room and I had my colored pencils and I would draw out the dishes we cooked on that given day.

• 21:44Guy Raz?

  In like a journal, you'd sketch out in a journal?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  I actually had these single pages with a round circle on it that resembled a plate. And I would, you know, just say, okay, this is this fish cooked this and this way, this long. And we made the sauce this way. And so, I mean, I have thousands of these. Still today, it's actually, I still work like this.

• 22:10Guy Raz?

  You sketch out the colored pencils, the dishes that you cooked?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:15Guy Raz?

  What were you doing that for back then?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Just to memorize what we did. But then what naturally happened was I would start drawing.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Imaginary dishes. Like, I would say, oh, what if we take the fish this way? And then we put this tomato with it and this caper sauce. Or, and so in my head, I started to create these dishes. And I was living with this elderly couple. And on the weekend, I would cook for them. But it was really an important process for me to start, you know, creating.

• 22:56Guy Raz?

  It's interesting because you you talk about the craft of being in the kitchen, right? And so was that what what you were doing early on? Like, you're just getting really good at the fundamentals of cooking?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, there's a Miles Davis quote, and he says, you have to learn the rules before you can break them. And I totally agree with that. And I think you need to sort of learn it from ground up before you can really start to branch out.

• 23:29Guy Raz?

  How did you how did you get your first job as a head chef? Where you were actually in charge of the whole kitchen?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  You know, it was like, it was kind of random. I saw this thing in a newspaper, advertising small farm, looking for a chef. And I applied and they called me back. And it was a beautiful little inn on top of the mountain overlooking, you know, the Alps. And it was a very humble restaurant, cooking Swiss traditional food. At first, I just talked with the owner and he offered me the job and I took it. I was just happy to be there. And I was cooking the dishes without changing the the menu.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  It was sort of an honest, simple restaurant with ingredients from the farms around.

• 24:22Guy Raz?

  So like, like venison kind of? I'm thinking like venison and white asparagus.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we definitely had venison in the game season. We had suckling pig and I mean, they even had tripe on the menu and like, you know, veal liver and things like that.

• 24:40Guy Raz?

  And, and this is not a restaurant, I'm imagining, that is getting a lot of attention because it's, it's like in the tiny corner of Switzerland in the Alps, right?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was hard to get to. We had like 12 to 20 guests. But then the owner was a lover of gastronomy and food. And so he would bring his friends. And then I started to cook a little bit more special dinners, things that weren't on the menu. And then people started like really loving some of the stuff. It all happened kind of quickly, so quickly that after six months, I was named discovery of the year and received a Michelin star.

• 25:23Guy Raz?

  In six months after arriving? And, and I think a lot of people know what that means. I mean, Michelin, the Michelin guide is certainly for cooks is like, it's like the Oscars.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't prepared at all. And looking back, it was like I had no repertoire of my own dishes. Now all of a sudden, there was this bright light on me and there were a lot of expectations. It was busy. Now we did like 35 guests a night. Journalists wanted to speak to me. Guests wanted to meet me and talk about the food. And I didn't really have much to say because I didn't really think about it that much yet. And I was overthinking everything and the dishes were complicated. And I wanted to impress and I, I feel like I had to impress and. It was a lot of pressure.

• 26:19Guy Raz?

  And did you transmit some of that stress and pressure to the team? Would you get like, I mean, cause you came up in kitchens where people were like, right, throwing things and shouting around. I mean, and I'm assuming you had to have maybe assimilated some of that behavior.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  I def, you know, I always feel that when a chef is loud and yelling, it means that he's overwhelmed and it's a weakness, absolute weakness. And that in my early days, I definitely felt myself in that position where I just, you know, was too overwhelmed. Everything was too much and, and I definitely have yelled a few times at someone. I'm not proud of it, but.

• 27:03Guy Raz?

  Right, so, so you're working at this restaurant in Switzerland. You were getting a lot of attention. Um, and I mean, clearly you're like this sort of hot young chef. And you got poached, you got recruited by a, a, what? The manager of a, of a restaurant in San Francisco at, at the Canton Place Hotel, like reached out to convince you to come and work in the US?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he, he sort of twisted my arm because the place I was at actually in the winter, it would snow so much that people actually couldn't drive up there. So it was closed for two months. And in those two months, he offered me to fly to San Francisco and visit him. And I arrived and he was there at the airport, him personally, the GM of the hotel. I remember driving from the airport to downtown San Francisco and everything felt so foreign, like everything, the, the way the buildings were built, the way the climate was, the smells, the, it just felt like such a foreign place.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  And then he's like, we're gonna go up to Napa Valley. I want you to meet Alice Waters and we're gonna eat at the French Laundry. And we're gonna go to the farmer's market in the ferry building. And for me, it didn't have any meaning. I didn't know about anything, but I was excited to go on this journey. And, you know, I was just so blown away. I mean, the bounty and the beauty of California is breathtaking. And it felt that in California, there was much more freedom in gastronomy and in having influences of different cultures.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  And it just felt creative and it just felt like the place was really alive.

• 28:56Guy Raz?

  So you you moved to to San Francisco, I think. I think it's around 2003 and you're still super young. I mean, you were like 27 years old around then.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Guy Raz?

  And I mean, even at that time, I mean, San Francisco was was an important food city. Maybe not not like it is today, but but this restaurant where you went to, Camden Place, I mean, it was also very well regarded at the time.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was an important restaurant that people were paying attention to. They just remodeled their dining room. And yeah, luckily, critics would come. And luckily, they liked what we were doing.

• 29:35Guy Raz?

  I think Michael Bauer, who was a critic of San Francisco Chronicle at the time, was a really influential critic. I think at the time, he wrote about you. The newspaper gave you four stars. He wrote, "The brightest star to land in Northern California since Thomas Keller opened the French Laundry," which is pretty amazing. Were you did you were you intimidated by by some of those other chefs? Because you were still pretty young. Or did you start to feel a little bit more confident?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  You know, I didn't really feel confident. I was just trying to run the best possible restaurant. You know, resources are limited, especially when you're coming up because you don't have, you know, the budgets that big restaurants have. So in the beginning, it's you have to work like. I mean, I worked six, seven days a week. I worked every day and, and long days. And I felt honestly overwhelmed every day and I didn't really know how to get to the end of the day. Yeah.

• 30:36Guy Raz?

  I mean, so the restaurant is getting a lot of attention and a well-known restaurateur who we've had on the show, Danny Meyer, he hears about you and he approaches you to come work at his restaurant in New York, 11 Madison Park.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:52Guy Raz?

  He's trying to revamp it. And how did he approach you?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Well, he had a few of his people come through Camden Place and they, you know, wanted to meet me. And eventually Danny Meyer came for a dinner. And, and so then I, I started to talk to Danny in a little more serious way. We probably spoke for probably 10 months back and forth and

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  and he would check in with me and, and eventually I would go out to New York. I, I think I went to New York eight times before I made the decision to take on this position.

• 31:31Guy Raz?

  So this was not a done, you were not, you did not have any intention of leaving Camden Place. You were not interested in another job. He was really very much pursuing you.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he really was. And even to the point where I felt like he was really invested in me. And he didn't put any pressure on me. He knew that the decision took time. And he, he gave me all the time in the world. And, but I think one thing, you know, the restaurant at that time was a brasserie.

• 32:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  With 200 seats.

• 32:08Guy Raz?

  It's huge.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  And that was really daunting.

• 32:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Daunting and almost like something I, I couldn't really imagine. And he said that, you know, I want to make this in one of the great dining rooms in the world and You know, and I've heard that before and so many people say that. But what it takes is just such a big commitment. And I really needed to trust him. I knew that there was a lot at stake because I also saw chefs coming to New York, who even came with big names. Yeah. I mean, look at Alain Ducasse, I think Robichon, really. Gordon Ramsay, some of the biggest chefs came to New York and failed.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  And the city was done with them. And they never got a second chance.

• 33:02Guy Raz?

  When we come back after the break, how Daniel's chance to run the kitchen at 11 Madison Park brought him to the pinnacle of success in the culinary world. But how reaching that goal wasn't quite what he expected. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 33:40Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2006 and Daniel Ho moves to New York as the new executive chef at Danny Meyer's fine dining restaurant, 11 Madison Park. And from the very beginning, Daniel finds that running a top kitchen in New York City is even more intense than he'd imagined.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. People always have a hard time with change. And, you know, he was serving seafood plateaus and steak frites and...

• 34:17Speaker 01

  When I started removing some of these staples, we would receive letters and this restaurant is going to close, this is never going to succeed. And then the size of the restaurant, it wasn't like a 20 or 30 seat restaurant.

• 34:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  But I think one of the things I somehow realized early was that as a chef, you can only be successful if you can also manage your business. And only if the restaurant makes money, there is a future for it. A lot of people try to allure you with this very wealthy guy who wants to have this restaurant. And it's sort of like his passion project. These things never, ever, ever work out because people get bored of it. It only works if it makes money.

• 35:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So your charge at the restaurant was to, you were kind of given a blank slate to play with. And at the same time, you joined, around the same time you joined, Danny Meyer brought in a new general manager, a young guy named Will Gudara. And he kind of partnered the two of you up and said, all right, Will would be the front of the house. You'll be the back of the house. Go do your thing. And did you and Will instantly click?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, we both, I think, benefited from our different experiences. Will grew up in America, in New York, worked with Danny Meyer. And Danny Meyer, you know, is well known for, for his hospitality. So Will brought a lot to the table. And I think hospitality is arguably more important than even the food. I think the food maybe brings the guests to the restaurant, but then the hospitality makes, makes the guest return and return. So we kind of really intertwined. Yeah, we started to really think in a very similar way.

• 36:13Guy Raz?

  I think one of the earliest reviews that the two of you together received was from a writer for The New York Observer. And she gave the restaurant three and a half out of four stars. It was pretty great. In this review, the writer, her name is Moira Hodgson, called you a star. But in the review, she said the dining room needed, and it's a quote, "a bit of Miles Davis." I mean, it's a good review, three and a half out of four stars. I'm imagining you're happy, but a bit of Miles Davis. What does that mean?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  I mean, first of all, the review was way too generous because I don't think we were at that level at that point. But yes, we were happy with the review and we were pretty perplexed about more Miles Davis. We didn't exactly know what she meant. But we were intrigued by it and we started to read about Miles. And we made a list of 11 words that we saw most commonly used to describe Miles. And some of the words were cool, endless reinvention, forward-moving, light, innovative, and so forth. And we looked at the list of words and we're like, wow, this is exactly what we need.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  And in particular, cool was a great word because fine dining restaurants at that time, you know, didn't really feel that cool. They felt a little stuffy and Miles became the creative sort of inspiration for the restaurant. And there are pictures of Miles in the restaurant today and there's the 11 words. And even today, we always think about, you know, these 11 words when we make big decisions.

• 37:55Guy Raz?

  It's amazing because, you know, this reviewer probably just wrote this line and turns out that her review had a huge impact. I mean, you guys took her words and absorbed them and thought, okay, let's see how we can be better. And you literally started listening to Miles Davis music because she wrote, it needs a bit of Miles Davis.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I mean, eventually we invited, like, maybe six years later, we invited her to dinner because we were also exactly saying the same thing. It's like, does she have any idea what that meant for us? And she didn't.

• 38:27Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  And she was just blown away. You know, Miles had such, he created so many different genres of jazz. He constantly reinvented himself. He took risks. He was innovative, but he also, you know, knew the rules. He was an incredible artist.

• 38:46Guy Raz?

  Meantime, you're getting more attention and the restaurant eventually got three stars, a three-star review from The New York Times, which is a great review. And I imagine it was Was getting busier and busier. And then September 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed. What did that mean? What did the recession, the beginning of the financial crisis mean for an expensive, fine dining restaurant like Eleven Madison Park at that time?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  It was really tough, especially, you know, we were sort of not the most expensive, but we were also, we were on a path to get from three stars to four stars. And so we operated at a higher expense of what a restaurant usually would.

• 39:35Guy Raz?

  And these are New York Times stars, we should be clear, because Michelin is three stars maximum, but New York Times is four stars maximum.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 39:42Guy Raz?

  And so you were thinking, we want to get a four star review from the New York Times, because that's obviously.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yes. So we put so much behind this effort and financial, too. We tried to operate at a four star level, but we didn't charge the four star prices. That's just how this game works. And then the crisis happens. And so the only time people now would go out and spend money was to a restaurant that was established or to a restaurant that was simple and casual.

• 40:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  For us, it hit us really hard. Like, we had so many meetings in those six months where we said, hey, we lost money every month, like huge amounts. I mean, we had nights where we had four guests.

• 40:34Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  In the restaurant.

• 40:37Guy Raz?

  And I guess around that time, you also start to notice that the food critic for the New York Times, Frank Bruny, he was a critic at that time, he's now columnist, that you start to see him having dinner at the restaurant. Presumably, you were thinking, this, like, this could be our opportunity to earn our four star.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. But we knew that he wouldn't give four stars to a restaurant that had like six customers.

• 41:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  So on nights that we thought he would come, we would invite a bunch of people, friends, regular guests. So the restaurant felt full when he came.

• 41:21Guy Raz?

  And you and you guys were, I mean, this is restaurants do this. They've got all kinds of tricks to recognize, even if a reviewer wears a disguise or

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:29Guy Raz?

  I don't know, or like a mustache or whatever. You knew who he was.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  We knew who he was and you know, we would have like all kinds of phone numbers that he would use to make the reservations. We knew how he looked like. We had all kinds of tricks. I don't know if we always caught him or spotted him, but at times we did. And so we saw him coming back and he had the meal. He called the next day. They said, oh, he will have some questions about the menu. They want to come take pictures of the dining room. The review will come out in four days. And I think it was August 2009. The review came out and it was a glowing review.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  And we never had an empty seat since that day.

• 42:20Guy Raz?

  In that review, he wrote, the restaurant now ranks among the most alluring and impressive restaurants in New York. Four stars, which is, I mean, they give maybe one four star review a year, if that.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:32Guy Raz?

  And that that was it. At that point, it was impossible to get a reservation or not impossible, but the restaurant was just packed every night.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really, it was unbelievable. It was overnight. It changed and you know, and there were other reasons later on to kind of keep fueling that fire, but that definitely lasted for a while.

• 42:58Guy Raz?

  I want to ask you about the food at Eleven Madison Park. There are Pinterest pages like devoted to your plates and photos all over the internet. And if you look at any plate that you serve, it looks like a piece of modern art. Did you start to look at, to think about your plates as as art, as artwork?

• 43:22Speaker 01

  You know, I thank you for talking so nicely about the food, but you know, art has definitely guided my creative process. My dream was to cook with very few ingredients, but say a lot. And you know, in the beginning, it was. Much more complicated. There were seven different things, ten different techniques on one plate. And you know, it was always kind of a cover up. It's easier to add things. But if you only have two things on the plate, then everything has to be perfect.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  And I think only four years ago, for the first time, I created a dish. It was a celery root braced in a pixplatter. And on the plate, there's the celery root and there is a white circle of celery root puree. And it's sort of just these two white circles. And for the first time in my life, I felt like that I achieved it.

• 44:33Guy Raz?

  I I read about how you thought about that dish, the celery root dish, as as sort of a template for how you would think about all of the recipes that you would create in the future.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. This created sort of four fundamentals of our cuisine. And what it was, it was the dish was delicious. And delicious is something that is instant. You don't need to think about it. The second thing, the dish had to be beautiful. The third thing, it has to be creative. Every dish has to move food forward in a way, have a different technique used differently, or have a flavor combination you might never had. And then the last one is intentional.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  The dish needs to have intention. And it could be as simple as two ingredients grown next to each other. Or it could be a childhood memory. It could be inspired by an artist. But it needs to have a reason for the dish to exist. And these four elements were present in that very first dish.

• 45:53Guy Raz?

  Wow. Can you give me another example of of that, of another dish you made that fulfilled those four requirements?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Okay, for example, we made this slow cooked halibut with different types of radishes and.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  It sort of kind of looks like a Rodco painting, actually. It's this beautiful halibut. And it has this whale, this daikon sheet whale of pickled daikon. And underneath are sort of all kinds of different colored radishes. And it comes with this orange blossom sauce. And it's delicious. It's beautiful. It's creative with the way the radish is cut. And it is intentional. It makes sense. It's rooted in classic cooking.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  And so I knew that if these four things are present in future dishes, then now we have created a language. So that was really a crucial moment after 25 years of cooking.

• 47:10Guy Raz?

  As the restaurant became more and more well-known and received international acclaim, the two of you decided to start your own business. You both kind of wanted to go out and branch out on your own. And Danny Meyer basically said, listen, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for you guys to compete against your own restaurant. And eventually, he basically suggested that you buy him out, that you buy out Eleven Madison Park. And you and Will became the owners.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was incredible. We were ambitious and we wanted to win and we wanted to create the greatest experience for our guests ever. And we're young. Don't forget, we're like 30 years old.

• 47:54Guy Raz?

  And I think a month after you bought the restaurant from Danny Meyer, you were awarded your third Michelin star. You are now a Michelin three-star restaurant. There are only, at this point, maybe, what, 12, 13 of them in the United States?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. It's unbelievable. It's hard to believe. But yes, I mean, there is a whole... People have these lists of must-visit restaurants. And now we were on that list.

• 48:20Guy Raz?

  As your partnership with Will, now your business partners, as it began to grow, you had Eleven Madison. And then you also had a partnership with a group that ran the Nomad Hotels. And you started opening restaurants in their hotels in New York and in Las Vegas. Did it mean you were spending less time in the kitchen at Eleven Madison and more time sort of being a brand ambassador?

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it definitely started to become more and more difficult to kind of fit everything, you know, in. And when you're starting to be pulled in a lot of different directions, it's harder to measure your accomplishments. And so in a way, it's less satisfying as a chef when you start having more success. You know, you're doing interviews and you're talking to guests and talking about other business opportunities and.

• 49:22Guy Raz?

  And presumably, I mean, Will is looking at his mentor Danny Meyer, who's got an empire and understandably probably is thinking, we can do this too. We can build our own empire.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, many others have built these incredible empires. And I think in our partnership also with Will, this is kind of when things started to be where we didn't always see eye to eye. And I felt like a lot of these opportunities were taking my time away from the things I really wanted to do. And so I felt that when I looked at my schedule on a daily basis, I wasn't even fully in control of the schedule. Eventually, it was just clear that, you know, our incredible ride is coming to an end.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  And I think it felt at the end that maybe we were holding each other back from what we really wanted to do.

• 50:25Guy Raz?

  It's amazing because the partnership, I mean, you guys were named the Food Innovators of the Year by the Wall Street Journal, the restaurant won the James Beard Award. You won every award by 2017. You were named the best restaurant on the planet by this famous list, the 50 best. And yet.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  I think at that time, things really started to.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Become very, very challenging, actually.

• 50:51Guy Raz?

  Between the two of you?

• 50:53Speaker 01

  And, and for myself, actually. It was this goal that we had for so many years. It was an easy goal to explain. It was easy to get, and, and this is a rating that comes out on a yearly basis. And we were on that list for 10 consecutive years before we came number one. So we entered the list at number 50 and then, you know, year after year, we

• 51:18Guy Raz?

  Worked up.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Mostly moved up. So it was this sort of carrot in front of us. And I understood that that's what it was. I mean, it's, it's kind of ridiculous to say that there is a best restaurant in the world.

• 51:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  There isn't, there are many, but it definitely made us better. It made us push harder. But the moment you receive it, well, that moment, you would imagine that's the greatest moment of your life. But somehow it wasn't. Because already, leading up to it, more and more opportunities came our way. We were pulled in so many different directions. And I realized that nothing in my calendar anymore was sort of things I wanted to do. And I kind of had an anxiety attack.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  And I kind of felt, and I didn't really knew where I was going anymore.

• 52:20Guy Raz?

  I mean, it sounds like you were, you'd been awarded, you reached the highest levels of your profession.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:28Guy Raz?

  But you were totally overwhelmed by everything going on around you. That, it sounds like you just like, you just wanted to like shut the door and shut the noise out.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. I didn't even want to leave the house. There were all these things in the pipeline that I had absolutely no passion for. I knew that I couldn't continue down this path and, and I was holding back my partner who was there for me. And so that wasn't fair to him. You know, so we just had to have a heart to heart and and sort of say, hey, time has come to go our separate ways because we're holding each other back.

• 53:10Guy Raz?

  When you guys, you did go your separate ways and you retained ownership over Eleven Madison Park and bought him out. And I think it was finalized in January or February of 2020.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:22Guy Raz?

  And March of 2020, the city shuts down. In fact, I interviewed Danny Meyer.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:30Guy Raz?

  It's the last interview I did before the shutdown. Three days later, he announced the closure of all his restaurants. And that really, when Danny Meyer did that, that was, that's sort of, everybody else followed suit. I mean, New York was this, was the global epicenter of that pandemic in the spring of 2020.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it felt like it happened overnight. And we were busy until the last moment, until we closed. It was a Sunday night. You know, we said, oh, we're going to close for the next two weeks and be safe and let's clean up the restaurant and we'll see each other soon. And still till today, you know, most of that team, we haven't seen each other. Eleven Madison Park has had 200 employees at that time. Many of them were from all over the world. And of course, people had to go back to their countries,

• 54:35Speaker 01

  their visa expired. Everyone had sort of figure out how to survive. This team was working together. A lot of this team was together for 10, 12 years. And, you know, we were family. We went through so much together. And at that one day, it was our last service and we closed the doors. And it's, it's pretty, it's devastating.

• 55:09Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how what happened during the pandemic totally changed how Daniel thinks about food, about business, and about the mission of his restaurant. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 55:44Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So the pandemic hits New York, and it hits hard. 11 Madison Park shuts down, and Daniel has to furlough his employees. And the city goes into lockdown. And after a few days in shock, Daniel starts to look around to see where he can volunteer to help. So he decides to go to soup kitchens.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  And as I'm going to these different soup kitchens, I'm seeing they're all shutting down because they rely on volunteers, who a lot of them are elderly, who are now scared to come in. And so it's just the problem is just getting worse and worse in front of my eyes. I knew that I had this restaurant of a kitchen that now was empty. And I also saw the need for meals and the amount of people who are food insecure just rise to extreme levels, I mean, doubling. And so I felt somehow had the responsibility and had the ability to make a difference.

• 56:54Guy Raz?

  You were, like so many people in New York, thinking, how can I contribute? How can I help in some way? You had a kitchen and you had a staff.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so two weeks from the day we shut down the restaurant, we turned the lights back on at 11 Madison, and we started producing meals. And As we started doing the work and as we also, we went into these neighborhoods to give away the food and just seeing the situation and seeing how grateful everyone was. And it really, I think, you know, I, I saw in New York that I didn't know. I spent times in neighborhoods I've never been to. You know, it, it felt so good to be able to make a small difference.

• 57:44Guy Raz?

  But how did you convince your team to come and work? I mean, weren't, people were freaking out about safety. This is before we understood that masks could actually really protect us. And I have to imagine that a lot of employees were, didn't want to come in to the kitchen.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was even some of my strongest people, you know, maybe they have a family. Maybe they have someone elderly at home. They couldn't take the, it was eight people out of 200.

• 58:12Guy Raz?

  Eight people came?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Eight people came. And I remember being in that kitchen that morning and looking in everyone's eyes. And everyone was, me included, full of fear. I mean, people were so scared walking down the street, being in the apartment building, in the staircase. You know, there was also early days. It was sad, like a good friend of mine who had the restaurant next door to me, Floyd Cardos, he unfortunately died on COVID. So it was, um, you didn't really know what to make out of this virus. But the fear kind of went away, not fully, but definitely a lot.

• 58:56Guy Raz?

  You, you were basically making catering sized meals. You're, you're going from paper thin slices of baby courgettes to sheet pans of chicken roasting in the oven.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you know, that, that was so beautiful, like. I got reconnected with a part of food that I wasn't connected anymore. And sort of the food for nurture, giving these meals to people who, you know, are food insecure. And it was so uplifting and so beautiful. And it was a gift to me in the end because I was able to connect with food in a whole new way. You know, we have continued today still. And we've, we've cooked over one million meals out of the kitchen of Eleven Madison Park.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Since March, it's been some of the most meaningful work in food that I've done.

• 59:59Guy Raz?

  I, I know that you had raised some money from some sponsors to enable you to, to run the commissary kitchen and to buy the food and to distribute it. But I mean, even so, the restaurant, right, Eleven Madison was not making much revenue, wasn't, wasn't really serving food. The costs of running a restaurant are very high. Were you at all worried about your financial situation?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, we, we faced bankruptcy. You know, we had engaged bankruptcy lawyers.

• 1:00:33Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  To understand what that means, what that would look like. It was a really, really scary time. You know, I personally, I owned a house that I had to sell just to figure it out. But you know, there's a great quote by Helen Keller. And it goes, "Life is a great adventure or nothing at all." And that quote was with me every single day. And I moved to America with two suitcases. And there was something so liberating about that. And last year, in a way, gave me that same feeling.

• 1:01:17Guy Raz?

  So you, you started to think differently about your whole kind of life's purpose. I mean, I don't mean it in a I'm not being critical, but I mean, you devoted your whole adult life to making food for, let's be honest, for rich people.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:32Guy Raz?

  Here you are, your kitchen is, you're making food for people in need. Did you start to think about, I don't know, what you were doing with your life and who you were serving? And did that experience of making simple food for people in need change the way you thought about what you were doing?

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think absolutely. I think that's why the whole thing started to feel a little bit empty, even reaching the highest honors in our industry.

• 1:02:00Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  At the same time, I have a deep love for cooking as art and as a performance in a beautiful space with a world-class team. And that obviously has its price, as it does when you go to a Broadway show

• 1:02:14Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  or anything else. And I actually believe that we can do both. And I made a commitment to myself that we will never not cook meals for people in need. And we actually are gonna take it even further. And when we do reopen the restaurant, we also made the commitment that part of the price of the reservation will go towards meals for people in need. And therefore, I'm very happy to continue to have a restaurant where food is celebrated

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  and is an art form and a performance, because that allows us to do the other thing.

• 1:03:05Guy Raz?

  Daniel, as of this moment we're speaking, it's April of 2021. There are lots of high-end restaurants that are preparing to reopen. Some have reopened, fine dining restaurants. You are planning to reopen Eleven Madison. You have gone through life-changing experience over the last year. How are you thinking about it?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  There has been so much change. And I think therefore it will change the restaurant. I think we've all been able to take a step back and sort of reevaluate. And in a way, maybe be a little bit more thoughtful also about the impact to our surroundings and the way we have sourced our food, the way we're consuming our food, the way we eat meat. It is not sustainable.

• 1:03:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  And that is not an opinion. This is just a fact. So we decided that our restaurant will be 100% plant-based.

• 1:04:06Guy Raz?

  So like, like no meat, no animal products?

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we decided we have to put our creativity towards a plant-based diet.

• 1:04:15Guy Raz?

  Wow. I, I think it's important, Daniel, to point out how sort of momentous this decision is, especially at your level, because I think there are just a tiny number of vegan restaurants on the planet with a single Michelin star and none with three Michelin stars, right? And I think, I mean, when I think about the tools of a chef, I mean, there are things like butter and cream and demi-glace and sweetbreads. And you are not going to use or serve any of that anymore. You're, you're not going to serve anything from an animal at your restaurant.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's correct. But I think the change will be in some ways subtle. Guests have never come to us to just eat a piece of steak or a lobster. They've always come to us to be on a journey and, and for us to tell a story. And so we want people to say in the end, oh my God, I can't believe they didn't use butter and cream and in the flow of the money. We said, oh, this is sort of the moment a caviar course used to be, or this is sort of the moment where braised meat would be.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  And, and so we're thinking about those mouth-watering moments and how can we accomplish them by using just vegetables? So I can give you a few examples, but we-

• 1:05:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah, please.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  We have these golden oyster mushrooms. We roast them in the oven. We make a stalk of kombu and mushrooms and then we we glaze them and we roast them deeper. And so that stalk really caramelizes around the mushrooms. And then in the end, we have this, we make this from pine needles. We make this dehydrated pine needle mushroom powder that then we dust over it in the end. And so, you know, so it's like caramelized on the outside, soft inside and juicy. And I mean, the palate is massive if you think about anything that grows.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  And so we want to create a restaurant that meat eater

• 1:06:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  will be blown away by eating vegetables.

• 1:06:32Guy Raz?

  Daniel, you are obviously not just a professional chef, but one of the greatest on the planet. So forgive me for this question because it's going to be a bit ignorant. My feeling is that cooking meat actually is easier. So for example, when I need to put quick dinner together, I'll just get some chicken and roast it. Or I'll get a steak and grill it for, you know, four or five minutes aside and that's dinner. Is there some, is there truth to that idea that actually when you eliminate meat and animal products from your repertoire, it's actually much harder and more time consuming?

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  I think I've always felt this way that to really see the creativity of a chef is by watching them work with vegetables. If you have a carrot and you want to make that into a meal, it's not so clear what direction you're going to go. It definitely requires more thought, more preparation, more organization, and then more time in the kitchen. And time is almost a new ingredient. But of course, it's about deliciousness in the end. I believe that if the meal is delicious, we don't need to worry about. I think people will buy into it.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  But I think if we really want to push the envelope, this is the place where we have to do it.

• 1:07:57Guy Raz?

  You are not just a chef, you are also the CEO. You run a business. There are people who depend on you. There are people whose livelihoods depend on the success of you and your business. And it's a lot of pressure to carry on anyone's shoulders. Are you nervous about what you're doing?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  I think you're hitting a very important point and one that does bring some anxiety because this is our livelihood, many people's livelihoods. I don't know if it would have been possible to make this change the way the restaurant was operating before, where every night, seven days a week, the restaurant was sold out, there was never an empty seat. We had 250 people just in one restaurant. To make changes like that would have been-

• 1:08:52Guy Raz?

  So disruptive.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  More scary.

• 1:08:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  And in a way, I'm sort of mid-career. I've achieved everything more than I ever thought I could. And I couldn't keep doing the same thing for the next 25 years.

• 1:09:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  I mean, how amazing is this? Like, having the opportunity, having the platform and having the name and the experience and the know-how, but being able to start brand-new. You know, life is a great adventure or nothing at all. And so that's what I'm really excited about in this next chapter of my career.

• 1:09:35Guy Raz?

  You dropped out of school at 14. You left home at 15. You were a dad at 18.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:42Guy Raz?

  You were working in kitchens in your 20s. Your career as a cyclist was kind of over. Not a lot of people would have bet on your succeeding. Not a lot of people would have looked at you at 21 and said, "This kid is going places." But you achieved the highest levels of success in the culinary world. It's quite amazing. It's like a movie. Do you ever reflect on that and think, "Wow"?

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  You know, there was... I went to school in Zurich and at one time I was sent home because in the art class, we were asked to draw a house. And I told the teacher that-

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  The paper isn't big enough for the house I want to draw. That I need a bigger paper. And so the teacher said, no, you're not going to get a bigger paper. Why can't you just be like everyone else? And so then I drew a house four times the size of the paper over the table and everything. The teacher got so angry and sent me home from school. And then I had to go to like, to go to therapy. And I met this most amazing woman. I was probably 10 years, 11 years old.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  The first time I was there, she said, oh, you know, what happened in school? So I told the whole story and she was so upset with the teacher. And we went to the art store. We got the biggest piece of paper and all kinds of paint. And we drew like a 12 foot house. And she said, you know, don't ever let anyone tell you there isn't enough, big enough paper. And so I think from that moment on, I always knew that there was something bigger and something more. And you could always reach higher than what people expect or what people think.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  And in a way that has given me like a fuel to my inspiration and my energy.

• 1:12:00Guy Raz?

  Daniel, when you think about your journey and all the things you've achieved and where you're heading, because it's certainly not over and in some ways just starting out again. How much of your success do you attribute to? How hard you worked and how well you did it? And how much do you think has to do with random chance and luck?

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  I think so much of random chance and luck. I've been extremely blessed, meeting incredible people at certain times. I have been willing to take risks, for sure. You know, I think cycling has taught me to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and to go the extra mile. And anyone who knows me knows that I'm willing to, you know, dig really deep to achieve certain things.

• 1:12:59Guy Raz?

  There's a, I can't remember where I read it, but it was an article about you. And you kept using the word passion in this interview. And passion is, you know, passion is this great word, you know? We're passionate about, like, I'm passionate about what I do. You're passionate about what you do. But then you explain that actually, in German, which is your mother tongue, the word is Leidenschaft. And it actually means something slightly different. That Leidenschaft requires a certain kind of suffering. And that that's how you described the way you think of passion and your approach to passion.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, you know, the German language is known for the long words.

• 1:13:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  Often pretty precise. And yeah, the word in German for passion is Leidenschaft. Leiden means suffering and schafft is sort of like the act of suffering or the willing to suffer for something. And I think it's actually a very accurate two way I see passion. You really have to be deeply committed when you're passionate. And it's not a hobby. Passion is really when you really want to dig deep. And it's your life and blood and you're willing to do anything for it. Yeah.

• 1:14:22Guy Raz?

  That's Daniel Hoome, owner and chef at Eleven Madison Park. By the way, during the pandemic, the restaurant developed a takeout option, kind of a prepared meal kit they call Eleven Madison Park at home. And for the time being, they say they'll keep it up even after they reopen because it's in line with Daniel's vision of food as nurture. Each purchase of a meal kit will pay for another 10 meals distributed to neighbors in need in New York City. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you're not a subscriber, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is [email protected].

• 1:15:06Guy Raz?

  If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at How I Built This or at Guy Raz. And on Instagram, you can follow at How I Built This NPR or my account, at Guy.Raz. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Runtin Arablui. Thanks also to Janet Oo Jung Lee, Liz Metzger, Farah Safari, Derek Gales, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.