Eleven Madison Park goes vegan

[pastrygirl]

Maybe he lost a bet 😂

[Anna N]

another interesting analysis of this decision. 
 

“Plus, she's [Chef from Dirt Candy] found that her clientele aren't big drinkers. Alcohol sales are often where restaurants can pad the otherwise thin profit margins on which they operate. If people aren't drinking with their meals, that could pose a financial problem.”

Here.

[weinoo]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

another interesting analysis of this decision. 
 

“Plus, she's [Chef from Dirt Candy] found that her clientele aren't big drinkers. Alcohol sales are often where restaurants can pad the otherwise thin profit margins on which they operate. If people aren't drinking with their meals, that could pose a financial problem.”

Here.

 

Two totally different clienteles for these 2 restaurants. In two totally different spaces.

 

Don't confuse or mistake this...

 

 

 

For this...

 

 

 

Nor the parks across the street from said restaurants.

 

My guess is people who go to Dirt Candy - that's their big night, they maybe don't have the money left to spend on good booze.  People going to EMP have too much money to start with.  So while Amanda's clients aren't big drinkers, Humm's are..

[rotuts]

thank you  @Anna N

 

I didn't realize :L

 

""   In a 2016 episode of Netflix's "Chef Table: France," Passard explained the about- face. Removing meat entirely had been too radical, he said, too shocking for his customers. He compromised by bringing back some poultry, fish and shellfish to the menu, while still focusing largely on vegetables. L'Arpège ""

 

I also agree w @weinoo 

 

 profit from booze is critical

 

interesting to see hype this works out.

Edited May 7, 2021 by rotuts (log)

[rotuts]

I don't imagine  $ 335 meal would appeal to

 

strict vegans.   a conjecture for sure.

 

after all , NYC is not bit an average place , 

 

and enough NYC people with  " too much money "

 

might go there , to   ( as stated on the Beyond Meat container )

 

' feel good '

 

( ive forgotten the full quote )

 

of interest to me  :

 

what will their wine list look like ?

 

does an expensive well aged red burgundy go w roasted Beets ?

Edited May 7, 2021 by rotuts (log)

[rotuts]

having a little time on my hands ,

 

I decided to see what the WineGuru's think :

 

https://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetableshttps://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94630846

 

https://www.foodandwine.com/vegetables/4-wines-pair-roasted-vegetables

etc

 

my ' paste ' function is not working  very well tthis AM

 

you can google if you like.

 

most suggestions are white wines , and lighter reds :

 

read :  less expensive wines  .

 

have a not found an expensive Grande Cru Chablis mentioned

 

and a fine wine it is !

 

attractively priced , for a good to great year 

 

at a lot !

[Eatmywords]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

 

Two totally different clienteles for these 2 restaurants. In two totally different spaces.

 

My guess is people who go to Dirt Candy - that's their big night, they maybe don't have the money left to spend on good booze.  People going to EMP have too much money to start with.  So while Amanda's clients aren't big drinkers, Humm's are..

Hmm, don't know about that.  Dirt Candy is not cheap.  The tasting is $55 w pairings $30, let's say $100 pp?  I think at that price point, it's the same vegans that have the means to buck up for the occasional EMP meal.  - To which the less alcohol consumption argument is valid. 

 

(Those are obvious meat eaters in the EMP pic btw, sickly w bad skin, bones out the side of their mouths, shameful)

[rotuts]

Im not a NYC person

 

but id say $ 100 for a ' nice ' meal 

 

uncrowded restaurant , no coat and tie req

 

Parka's are OK

 

is quite reasonable.

 

not for me ,but for Them

[heidih]

There is the niche of high end organic/natural wines.  I lunched once with distributors of that product and they were trying to enter the fine dining scene versus the hippy-dippy scene which vegans are sometimes pigeon-holed into.

[kayb]

Me, I'm dealing with the two critical questions of the moment:

 

1. What is the appropriate wine with my Gyro salad?

2. What is the appropriate wine with my barbecue plate that's looking likely for tomorrow night?

 

All that aside, I am booked in for Bulrush in two weeks, with wine/beer pairing. And looking forward to it!

 

[weinoo]

2 hours ago, kayb said:

All that aside, I am booked in for Bulrush in two weeks, with wine/beer pairing. And looking forward to it!

 

I hope @gfron1 doesn't decide to go vegan before then.

[gfweb]

Might be a mistake to think of the clientele at EMP being vegan now. Normal people might just be eating vegan to try EMP.

[rotuts]

for 335 $$

 

for two 670 $$$

 

and then there is the Wine

 

Ill try something else.

 

that's like an Anova oven 

 

almost.  id rather try that

Edited May 8, 2021 by rotuts (log)

[Anna N]

21 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Also, or more to point, whether clients ARE vegan or merely TRYING vegan.

Or how much alcohol it will take to make the experience seem enjoyable.

 

I have no doubt whatsoever that EMP will produce some extraordinarily good vegan food. And you are probably right. Their intended demographic is probably not true vegans but people who want a different experience. How many times they will want to enjoy that experience at $335 a pop remains to be seen. 

[Anna N]

44 minutes ago, gfweb said:

Might be a mistake to think of the clientele at EMP being vegan now. Normal people might just be eating vegan to try EMP.

I had to read this a couple of times before I understood the gist of what you were saying. At first I thought you were saying that future diners were now practising being vegan so they would be ready for the opening of EMP. 😂 So forgive me if it seems that I merely repeated what you had already said!

[rotuts]

1 )  its NYC

 

2 ) EMP  is a business , a restaurant   for profit

 

nothing wrong w any of the above 

 

it will make no difference to EMP who patronizes them

 

since , as far as I can understand

 

in FR  the food industry has not chosen

 

to look into , nor invest in "" Fake Neat "

 

nor has Spain , Italy , etc

 

gastro tourists aside 

 

the ref's above

 

suggest , 

 

Good Luck 

 

EMP

 

I do wish the well

 

but

 

it a party of 2 , etc 

 

were offered 

 

an Anova over your dinner ?

 

 

[heidih]

Eater talks about the EMP move may bring focus on vegan dining in general  https://la.eater.com/2021/5/7/22423381/five-vegan-dishes-los-angeles-innovation-plant-based-food-restaurants-daniel-humm

[teonzo]

I'm sure there are many vegans in the rich classes too. Some of them are of the "good type" (as I call them), people who really care and believe in that way of being. Some others are of the "bad type", people who go vegan just to feel "morally superior". People with an annual salary in the 6 figures or above don't care that much if they spend $50 or $500 for a meal. It's like asking me if I care spending 15 euro for a gorgonzola+speck pizza with a bottle of beer, instead of 2 euro for a frozen margherita and a bottle of water.
Just think about the guys who offered their "sustainable" yacht to Greta Thunberg to reach the New York conference, to avoid the carbon emissions of a trans-oceanic flight. I'm sure that yacht costs a bit more than a gondola. Are those guys thinking "I'll get a $20 meal from Superiority Burger and send the remaining $300 to Africans", or are they thinking "cool now we can have top class vegan"?
There are loads of rich people in New York, a good chunk of them are vegan. They will be happy to spend their big money in a restaurant that satisfies their needs. And they will happily buy expensive bottles, just think about Jacques Selosse or the other big names of biodynamic wines.

Besdes this, the market for the restaurants with big names is much different from the others. You don't need a strong base of regular customers to succeed, you can get your room full with once-in-whenever customers, Alinea proved this.
A good portion of those customers are other people in the restaurant business who want to experience what the top class restaurants are doing. Lots of cooks spend their hard earned cash to visit top restaurants. Their favourite choices are the restaurants that make something different than others. This is the main reason of the success of elBulli, Noma and so on: word spread fast in the business when someone is doing things differently, people are curious and want to experience that. Is it a problem if it's vegan? Not at all.
The "michelin gourmets" (aficionados who want to visit 3 star restaurants) have a similar way ofthinking: they give priority to the "different" stuff.

Making this choice for EMP is not bold at all. They are in New York, home of tons of rich people. A city with loads of turists (ok, not in this peculiar period). When a customer is willing to spend $300 for the food, then he/she is not going to be cheap on beverage. Risks are almost null for them.
They made a well calculated move. It's the perfect time for going vegan, in this period people are more concerned than ever about health troubles and sustainability. Making this move will put them as the "good guys" in the eyes of causal Joes, putting EMP as the front runners of the restaurants that care about environment. Which they are not. Causal Joe does not know about Moosewood, neither he heard about Passard in Paris or Leemann in Milan (first full vegetarian restaurant to get a michelin star, always been mostly vegan). Making this transition is giving them a huge mediatic resonance, of the positive type.

We can argue how much sustainable this choice is. As was written, a $300 meal is the exact opposite of sustainable. The restaurant needs an employee for each customer. It's not sustainable to have 1 person to prepare the meal for 1 person, simple math. Besides that, how are those employees living? Do they earn enough money to afford an apartment near their job place? Highly doubt that. Or do they need to make a pretty long commute to reach their job? How much carbon emission for this?
Vegetables grown for the restaurant will be really sustainable? How far from the restaurant will they be grown? Which lengths will the farmers take to grow top class produce? Simple example: almost all top class wines are made cutting aways lots of unripe grapes, leaving few on the plant, so the few ones that will mature will have more flavour. This means their field is missing a big chunk of productions. Not a sustainable choice, when lots of human beings don't have enough food to survive.
When I read "The Third Plate" by Dan Barber there were many examples about this. They were growing the carrots for the final dishes in their farm, but were buying the carrots for the other uses (stocks and so on) from an organic farm in California. What's the carbon footprint of shipping carrots from California to New York? He wrote he switched to a Spanish producer of foie gras, because it was ethical and respectful of ducks and geese. What's the carbon footprint of air shipping foie gras from Spain to New York?
Talking about sustainability with these choices has really no sense, it's just smoke in the eyes for marketing reasons.
The positive thing we need to expect from them is to find ways to create delicious foods from stuff that would go to waste. If they find ways to make banana peels good to eat, then great. Same with lots of other stuff that ends up in bins. It already happens for ingredients that we know how to turn into delicious food (way too many people waste citrus peels, while they could candy them, and it's a really easy process). And is happening to lots of stuff we currently don't know how to use. We need to expect the top class players like EMP to find ways to transform those bits into delicious food. Claiming this research process is sustainable, well, it's just a marketing fad.

 

 

Teo

 

[weinoo]

@teonzo has made a few of the same points I may have made previously.

 

Again, I won’t be worrying about EMP’s viability in this city, based on the way I’ve seen people spend money on wine and liquor.

Edited May 9, 2021 by weinoo (log)

[Duvel]

On 5/8/2021 at 1:20 AM, kayb said:

Me, I'm dealing with the two critical questions of the moment:

 

1. What is the appropriate wine with my Gyro salad?

2. What is the appropriate wine with my barbecue plate that's looking likely for tomorrow night?

 

All that aside, I am booked in for Bulrush in two weeks, with wine/beer pairing. And looking forward to it!

 

1) Retsina

2) An Amarone, carbonated via MR and served with a candied cherry

[gfron1]

On 5/7/2021 at 9:12 PM, weinoo said:

 

I hope @gfron1 doesn't decide to go vegan before then.

An historically rooted Ozark menu going vegan would be ... well, it wouldn't be at all.

[kayb]

@gfron1, I am bringing you fig and blackberry jam. And some pretty tart strawberry preserves that didn't set but ought to serve for ... something. I've been using them over ice cream.

 

 

[weinoo]

And today I saw the news that Single Thread is opening a "sister" restaurant, in the "old' SHED space.

 

It will be plant based...

 

Quote

We are very happy to officially announce our new sister project in Healdsburg, Little Saint, in collaboration with our good friends @kenfulk and the Ubben Family! An exciting community center featuring a plant based cuisine restaurant, lounge, cafe, wine and retail shop, and cocktail bar as well as amazing music, art, and educational programming all benefiting both our community and @saintjosephsartsfoundation

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CO9DcFNrNqb/

[SLB]

On 5/9/2021 at 8:42 AM, teonzo said:

Talking about sustainability with these choices has really no sense, it's just smoke in the eyes for marketing reasons.

 

This.  I find it downright wacky.  

[Eatmywords]

18 hours ago, weinoo said:

And today I saw the news that Single Thread is opening a "sister" restaurant, in the "old' SHED space.

 

It will be plant based...

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CO9DcFNrNqb/

Is it true they're working with Danny Meyer to put a Shake Shack 50 yards away (like EMP) in case diners get hungry?