"No hummer please, we're British": Claridge's tells celebrity chef to beet his meat elsewhere

who wants foie gras when you can have gelatinized carrots and mushy peas?

“And no tofu soup either”, says his employer, as it escorts newly-converted vegetarian chef David Humm out the door rather an accede to his demand that the menu go 100% vegan.

I wouldn’t know a celebrity chef if he bit my pot roast, and I’d never eat at a $500-plate restaurant patronized exclusively by super-rich BLM supporters, but it’s always amusing to sit back and observe the battles that erupt when the oh-so-superior, sensitive, caring camp meets the hard reality of “get woke, go broke”.

While plant-based food may be the future, it doesn’t seem like the future of diners dining at Claridge’s London hotel, which has just split from Eleven Madison Park chef Daniel Humm.

Humm wanted the restaurant to be vegan. Claridges, the guardian Reports, not. “We respect and understand the culinary direction of a completely plant-based menu that Daniel has chosen and is committed to and which he is now looking to introduce in London,” the hotel sent to Twitter. “However, this is not the path we are currently trying to take here at Claridge, so unfortunately we have mutually agreed to go our separate ways.”

The chef has run the restaurant at the five-star Davies & Brook hotel since it opened in 2019, when Humm was just a simple superstar, known for its exquisitely labor-intensive preparations and roast duck glazed with lavender honey.

But during the pandemic – as has now been well documented – he had had something of a vegan awakening. “Our animal production practices, what we do with the oceans, the amount we use: it’s not sustainable,” he said told WSJ magazine in May. “If Eleven Madison Park is truly at the forefront of gastronomic and culinary innovation, it is crystal clear to me that this is the only place I can go next.” The restaurant went vegan [and was promptly savaged by the NYT]..

Claridge doesn’t have it, however. “If they make the restaurant vegan,” an unnamed insider told the Daily Mail, “They are going to piss off thousands of regulars.” Humm persevered and made his position clear on Instagram: “For me, the future is vegetable.” he wrote on Friday. “Standing behind this mission and what we believe in is the most important thing and unfortunately we cannot compromise.”

Humm and his team will be with Davies & Brook until the end of this year. Claridge promises, politely as always, an update on which way she will take “in due course”.