It’s reminiscent of a what-I-did-over-summer-vacation essay, but the topic could not be more serious. Each year, millions of pounds of perfectly good food are tossed in the trash, while others struggle to put meals on the table.
Which brings us back to the essay. It’s by Chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park, and a copy of it arrived in our mailbox today. In it Humm reveals that during the period beginning March 2020 and the restaurant’s reopening on June 10 of this year, there were days when he wasn’t sure that Eleven Madison Park would survive the COVID-induced nightmare. He writes, “The time away forced me to consider my place in the world and my responsibility to those who weren’t as fortunate.”
And so what Humm did was to focus his energies on ReThink, an organization dedicated to “a more sustainable and equitable food system.” The chef muses:
While serving meals during the pandemic, I saw a New York I never knew. I also experienced the magic of food in an entirely new way, a way that I knew we had to continue once the restaurant was able to reopen its doors. On my darkest days, and there were many, serving the community with ReThink was my light.
Now, battling food insecurity through our partnership with ReThink has become a cornerstone of Eleven Madison Park, and we’ve changed our business model to reflect that.
Toward that rededicated purpose, Eleven Madison Park is hosting an intimate fundraising dinner on Oct. 12. Tickets, via Tock, are $7,500. That amount of money, even for a dinner cooked by Daniel Humm, is beyond the realm of possibility for the majority who will read this. But if you can donate anything at all, every little bit helps.