‘TASTES LIKE LEMON PLEDGE’

NYT Skewers 3-Michelin Star Restaurant’s Vegan Pivot: ‘Smells Like a Burning Joint’

Reviewer Pete Wells said the beet at Eleven Madison Park “tastes like Lemon Pledge” and transports the eater to “the plant kingdom’s uncanny valley.”

Earlier this year, one of New York City’s ritziest three-Michelin-Star restaurants announced its menu would become entirely plant-based. Eleven Madison Park’s chef and owner Daniel Humm said at the time, “The current food system is simply not sustainable, in so many ways.” The change has come at a price almost as hefty as its $335 tasting menu, according to New York Times reviewer Pete Wells, who wrote in a brutal review that Eleven Madison’s beet, among other unsavory morsels, “tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.”

Throughout the the whole vegan experience, Wells said, “almost none of the main ingredients taste quite like themselves...some are so obviously standing in for meat or fish that you almost feel sorry for them… in tonight’s performance, the role of the duck will be played by a beet, doing things no root vegetable should be asked to do.” The menu, he said, transports the eater not to culinary nirvana but to “the plant kingdom’s uncanny valley.” Wells did say that the entire meal wasn’t a wash, reserving praise for the cocktails and the desserts.