Humm on Hudson Street, Daniel Humm Goes Casual in the West Village
The Eleven Madison Park chef takes over the old En Japanese Brasserie with a dining room, a bar and a lounge, opening October 10
For two decades, the big room at 435 Hudson Street, between Leroy and Morton, belonged to En Japanese Brasserie, a West Village fixture until it closed in December 2024. On Saturday, October 10, the lights come back on under a new name, and it is one of the most famous names in New York dining.
Humm is the new restaurant from Daniel Humm and the team behind Eleven Madison Park, and it is meant to be the relaxed one. Reservations opened on Resy on Thursday, October 1, and Eater New York was quick to call it a big-deal opening.
The Chef Who Changed His Mind
Humm is the chef who took Eleven Madison Park to three Michelin stars and held them through his switch to a vegan menu and his later walk back from it. The last few years have been busy in other ways too. As Eater New York lays out, he opened Clemente Bar, a cocktail room built around art at the Eleven Madison Park address, started a pasta line with midcentury-style packaging, and launched a chef residency in Charleston, South Carolina.
Humm, the restaurant, is something else. According to its description on Resy, as reported by Eater, it reflects the way the chef himself likes to eat and drink. The menu follows the seasons and the market, and much of the produce comes from Magic Farms, run by Maciek Kobielski in Hoosick Falls, New York, which grows only for the Humm restaurants.
The menu follows the seasons and the market, and much of the produce comes from a farm that grows only for the Humm restaurants.
Three Ways In
The room is set up for different kinds of nights. There is a dining room for the full menu. There is a bar, and there is a lounge, both with smaller menus of their own. That split matters downtown. It means you can book a proper dinner, or you can wander in after a show for a glass of wine and a plate, and still feel like you are in the same house.
The lounge may be the real news for the after-dark crowd. Fine dining in this city usually ends with a check and a coat. A lounge with its own menu, under a chef with three stars on his record, suggests a room built to keep people around after the plates are cleared. Whether it becomes a late-night address or stays a dinner reservation will be decided by the neighborhood, not the press release.
A spokesperson shared the opening menu with Eater. It includes crispy feta with sesame and a shallot agrodolce, tuna crudo, a chicory and tangerine salad, fried eggplant with pickled green tomatoes, grilled fish, and a roast chicken for two. Dessert is milk and honey. Resy describes a wine list that mixes established regions with smaller producers.
The space was designed by the French designer Pierre Yovanovitch. The walls carry art by Francesco Clemente and Rashid Johnson, along with pieces by Louise Bourgeois and Roni Horn, according to the restaurant.
It means you can book a proper dinner, or you can wander in after a show for a glass of wine and a plate.
The Lease Behind the Door
Not everyone is celebrating. The handoff from En was a fight. As the newsletter Caper reported, and Eater recounted, En's owner Reika Alexander said she wanted to renew her lease and was ready to pay more, then found the Eleven Madison Park team touring the space while she was still negotiating. The landlord, Hudson Square Properties, disputed any suggestion of bad faith and told Caper that unpaid rent was the subject of active litigation.
That backstory will follow the restaurant for a while, the way these stories do in a neighborhood with a long memory. The West Village has watched plenty of beloved rooms change hands, and the people who ate at En for twenty years will notice who is cooking in that room now.
Still, the timing fits a fall when the big names are coming back to the dining rooms they built, from Daniel Boulud at Lincoln Center to the return of the Café des Artistes uptown. Humm is doing something different. He still has the formal room that made him. This one, by the restaurant's own description, is about how he would rather eat and drink. Reservations are live now, and the first tables go on October 10.
