Eleven Madison Park and SingleThread Farms Collaborate on a 10-Course Plant-Based Menu

What does luxury mean in 2024?

For award-winning chef Daniel Humm, it’s all about vegetables. “Caviar, Kobe beef, foie gras is from a different time,” the Swiss-born Eleven Madison Park Chef says. “We need to adapt what luxury means today. We need to change our ways and not be so afraid of change because it can be quite beautiful.”

The famously plant-based Humm is teaming up with chef Kyle Connaughton and head farmer Katina Connaughton of SingleThread Farms in Sonoma for dinners on August 1 and 2 that will highlight the California farm’s peak summer bounty at its three-Michelin-starred Healdsburg restaurant. The menu will be completely plant-based, offering a rare collaboration between two culinary leaders and their teams.  

“Having a handcrafted meal put together in the moment feels extremely luxurious,” says Humm “It’s one of a kind. You can only get it at that moment.”

The 10-course menu will feature some collaborative dishes and some solo ventures, all celebrating the day’s bountiful harvest.

“The height of summer abundance will drive the menu,” says Connaughton. “What we always do here is tell the story of today. Any time you come and dine, it’s such a reflection of the farm, produce, and flowers, at that moment in time.”

This summer, SingleThread’s farm is growing over 30 different varieties of tomatoes across 300 tomato plants in the fields. 

“Rather than one chef getting all the tomatoes or doing one dish, we’ll do a collaboration, a celebration of tomatoes,” Connaughton explains. The meal will open with a picnic-style tomato feast, with guests dining on different preparations of various tomatoes by both restaurants. Quintessential California produce will drive the menu, with dishes featuring various types and preparations of summer squash and squash blossom, stone fruit, cucumbers, eggplants, potatoes, strawberries, and beyond. Though SingleThread typically offers an omnivorous menu, the special event will be purely vegan, a pro-planet — not an anti-meat stance — Humm emphasizes. 

“The techniques are really centered around showcasing the produce and showing the beauty of what a plant-based menu can be,” Connaughton says. “It’s really about the appreciation for the agricultural side of things via food and dining. Our farmers work for months and months and months to harvest the fruits and vegetables that we have for one day. The kitchen begins in the field when farmers select each and every item of what’s ripe and ready. We’re converting appreciation and hoping that guests want to seek those things out in their own life.”

Though the $468 per person dinners sold out nearly instantly via Tock (a waitlist is available), both chefs want the effects of the ephemeral dinner to impact culinary enthusiasts. 

Shopping at farmers’ markets locally and purchasing produce that’s in season is an easy step to capturing the ethos of the event. The spirit of creating dishes that can only be tasted once and never recreated can appeal to any chef or home cook. 

“There’s a lot going on in the world that’s scary,” Humm says. “It’s scary to think about where one starts to make changes. Vegetables aren’t scary.”