Chef Daniel Humm on Eleven Madison Park’s Plant-Based Chapter

And even so, there's this romance of the chef who goes to the market every day and only buys the things that are at the peak of the season. And ideally, the vegetables never even hit the refrigerator, it's so fresh. And of course on Monday there's no fish in a restaurant because of course the fishermen don't work over the weekend. It's all not true.

JR: It's a fantasy.

DH: It's a fantasy. And I think we need to start speaking on that.

JR: How do you think chefs specifically, or how do you think the restaurant industry should be moving on climate? What are some things that you think that they should be doing across the industry?

DH: Well, the one thing I want to say is sometimes it feels so daunting and it feels like we don't even know our electric cars really better than the regular cars. You hear things, people say like, “Oh, but the batteries are just as bad.” And sometimes it's so complicated that we feel so overwhelmed that we don't even start anywhere. And what I would say is that we cannot be perfect.

And I think as a perfectionist, and perfection has been my entire life, today I think more about progress than perfection. Because we can't tackle everything from food waste to recycling, to eating plant-based, to have better energy sources. We cannot tackle all of it. We can't be perfect. But I would say we have to push ourself to start somewhere. And I think we all have an opportunity to make a little change in our world, if it's at home or in your work. And then if you start somewhere, it can grow from there. And if we all start, tackle our little things, that can become very powerful.

JR: What's the easiest way to start?

DH: For me, it was clear that the most powerful thing we can do is actually to choose what is on our plate. And this is not a religion for me, cooking plant-based, but I know it's better for the planet. And by the way, it's better for your health also. But eating plant-based more often, that's a positive change. Even if you eat plant-based once a week. Or I mean, in America, average American eats a pound of meat a day. That's absurd.

JR: That's a lot.

DH: Do we really need that? So if we can reduce that by half, we've come a long way.

JR: That's a major change.

DH: And it will make a big difference in terms of climate.

JR: So you've got a lot going on right now. You have new collection of books, Eleven Madison Park, the plant-based chapter. And you just opened the Clemente Bar, which is chic, sexy little bar inside Eleven Madison Park. That is a collaboration with the Italian artist, Francesco Clemente. Can you talk a little bit about those projects and your new book and all this stuff you've got going on?