CONCLUSION

If another restaurant had been named number-one on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2017, it might have chosen to celebrate by setting the cruise control and coasting on all the hard work that led to the accolade.

But Eleven Madison Park (often affectionately referred to as “EMP”) isn’t just any restaurant. The site of two of our peak dining experiences of recent memory didn’t get that way by resting on its laurels.

After reading and reflecting on EMP’s first review in 2006 from Moira Hodgson in the New York Observer, manager Will Guidara and chef Daniel Humm decided to make some changes. “We realized we weren’t inventing anything… we were just playing copycat,” Guidara told the audience at the 2017 Welcome Conference, citing examples of picking out top-of-the-line china and furnishings. “But invention is a matter of being open to so much change!”

The partners famously took Moira Hodgson’s suggestion to heart, brainstorming the eleven words most often used to describe Miles Davis, which included terms like adventurous, cool, collaborative, endless reinvention, forward-moving, fresh, innovative, inspired, light, spontaneous, and vibrant.

Guidara and Humm “got to work,” investing in their cocktail program, changing their menu format, and “creating a four-star restaurant we’d feel comfortable going to. EMP is a genuine expression of the two of us. As we change, it has to change with us.”

They acknowledged that the process of reinvention is “very, very personal”: “You can’t focus on the risks. You have to live in your hopes and not your fears.”

This led to their decision to do the unthinkable: At the height of their restaurant’s global distinction, they announced plans to close it to work yet again at reinvention: “We know we need to change in order to stay the same—and that we must change with authenticity.”

Contemplating the creative process that he and Guidara had already undertaken, and that which still lies ahead, appeared to give Daniel Humm pause. “Closing and rebuilding EMP is beyond exciting,” he said, before the two acknowledged: “We’re genuinely scared.”

But fear has never seemed to stop Humm or Guidara, nor the inspiration behind their restaurant’s re-creation, Miles Davis, who famously said, “Do not fear mistakes—there are none.”

[Moira Hodgson’s review of Eleven Madison Park, saying she wished the restaurant had a bit “more Miles Davis”] was the best gift we could ever hope to receive.… We were fired up, and got to work.

—WILL GUIDARA and DANIEL HUMM, at the 2017 Welcome Conference

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

—WILL GUIDARA, Eleven Madison Park, on the most important question his restaurateur father, Frank Guidara, used to ask him