Skip to main content
·

Daniel Humm Opens HUMM, a New York Restaurant Built by Friends

HUMM, Daniel Humm’s new restaurant at 435 Hudson Street in New York’s West Village, opened on 10 October with interiors, furniture and lighting by Pierre Yovanovitch and a ceiling painted by Francesco Clemente. Here the chef of Eleven Madison Park sets the tasting menu aside and cooks à la carte.

Eva Winterer

Daniel Humm opened HUMM, a restaurant built by his friends, in New York’s West Village on 10 October. The chef of Eleven Madison Park told Cultured it is “the first restaurant I open completely on my own”. Pierre Yovanovitch designed the interiors, the furniture and the lighting, and his studio presents HUMM as its first restaurant in the United States. Overhead, the painter Francesco Clemente spent two months covering the ceiling with stars, animals, trains and ticking clocks. “This place was really created by my friends,” Humm told Wallpaper*.

● In brief

The room. HUMM takes over 435 Hudson Street, home to En Japanese Brasserie for two decades. Yovanovitch’s studio says the open kitchen and its monumental oven give the space its structure. The palette runs through red, burgundy, ochre and gold, with oxblood carpets and velvet banquettes. Red lacquered screens divide the dining room into smaller, more intimate areas.

The art. Clemente’s figures continue on the curtains, rugs, custom tiles and stone floors. The private dining room sits inside a fabric tent. A work by Rashid Johnson stands at the entrance, and work by Louise Bourgeois and Roni Horn is on view.

The menu. HUMM cooks à la carte. The dining room serves the full menu, and the bar and lounge serve shorter ones. Much of the cooking happens in the wood oven and on the charcoal grill. Red meat stays off the menu. The signature is a roast chicken for two from Amish farms in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Dmitri Magi, the executive chef, has cooked with Humm for 15 years.

● Why it matters

Daniel Humm made his name with the tasting menu at Eleven Madison Park, and at HUMM the room becomes the host. Humm calls Yovanovitch “a great friend”, and the furniture and lighting were designed for these rooms. Clemente had already painted Clemente Bar, the lounge upstairs at Eleven Madison Park. For The Silent Luxury, HUMM is a house built among friends. Guests eat beneath a painted ceiling, within sight of the fire.

Yovanovitch told Wallpaper*: “Sometimes you miss the spirit of New York in new design.” Humm sets a longer horizon. “We want to become an institution,” he told Cultured. En Japanese Brasserie held the room for two decades, and HUMM now has to prove it can last as long.

Go deeper: Asador Etxebarri, a wood-fired grill in a Basque village, tops The 50 Best Restaurants 2026.

Sources