DANIEL HUMM & WILL GUIDARA
Although since separated, Daniel Humm and Will Guidara were a match made in heaven, whose three-Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park in New York was named the best in the world. I interviewed the duo for Supper Magazine when they opened the NoMad Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles
There are few neighborhoods in the US that have undergone a more rapid and extreme transformation than Downtown Los Angeles. For decades, the area was the dark centre of LA: a wasteland of half-empty office blocks, abandoned Art Deco landmarks and quiet, ghost-like streets. But over the past 10 years, the area has changed into a cultural epicenter. Thanks to hotspots such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, not to mention a string of talented chefs and bartenders making their LA debuts, Downtown LA has developed into a neighborhood that is electrifyingly cool. Hotels too have sprung up on every corner. From small boutique properties like the Standard, the Ace or the Freeman hotel taking over historic buildings, to skyscrapers operated by corporate giants like Marriott and InterContinental, in the past decade, Downtown has undergone a building boom not seen since the golden 1920s.
Perhaps no other establishment is more indicative of how far Downtown has come, than the new NoMad Hotel. Opened at the end of January, the 241-bedroom property is much more than just the West Coast outpost of the renowned New York original. Located in the former headquarters of The Bank of Italy, a 12-storey monument built in 1923, it has its own, unique LA vibe. Where the New York City NoMad leans French in design and inspiration, its LA sister skews Italian, a nod to the building's roots. With interiors beautifully restored by French architect Jacques Garcia, featuring elegant coffered ceilings, Fortuny lamps, indoor potted palms and walls of purple velvet and gold, it has a dazzling neoclassical atmosphere that effortlessly recreates that old Hollywood glamor.
At the centre of the hotel is hospitality provided by Make It Nice, the restaurant and bar group run by one of the industry’s most dynamic duos: Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. The chef-restaurateur team behind the three-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park, the casual Made Nice restaurant and the NoMad in Manhattan, has not just made its West Coast debut in Downtown LA but also its first foray outside of the Big Apple. “We’re really excited to be in LA,” says Guidara. “It’s a great time to be here.” Humm agrees: “In many ways launching in Downtown feels similar to when we launched the original NoMad in New York. At that time the Nomad neighborhood was an area where not much was happening, a bit of a dark triangle in Manhattan. So being in Downtown LA, it again feels like we’re contributing to the transformation of an area and that’s pretty exciting.”
The pair is in charge of five distinct dining and drinking areas inside the hotel, which, like its sister property, is owned and developed by the Sydell Group. The main restaurant is the 110-seat fine dining Mezzanine, currently only open for dinner. Another restaurant, the Lobby, is a more informal, all-day place. For drinking, there’s the Coffee Bar, fitted out in a Venetian-style with antique mirrors, which becomes a suave cocktail bar in the evening; the buzzing Giannini Bar, which is adjacent to the Lobby and named after Amadeo Giannini, the former bank’s founder; the Library, where drinks and light food are served; and a Rooftop Bar, with food, for a pool that opens in the spring. All cocktails are the work of Leo Robitschek, who is also the bar director at NoMad in New York, which was named the World’s Best Bar in 2016.
Humm and Guidara had been planning NoMad Los Angeles for more than three years. They readily admit this involved an enormous amount of research into the local dining scene. “We really wanted to become part of the community here,” explains Guidara. “In New York we have an incredibly tightly knit network of chefs and restaurateurs and coming here, it seemed crazy to launch a restaurant without getting to know our contemporaries first.” So for 18 months, in the run-up to the opening, the duo ran a NoMad food truck to familiarize themselves with LA, its neighborhoods and restaurants by collaborating with some of its most celebrated chefs. Roaming the streets, the two learned all about the city; most importantly that nobody knew who they were. “Someone actually came to the food truck and said: ‘Hey this is really good, you guys should think about opening a restaurant!’, which was a real eye opener,” Guidara laughs.
“But,” Humm adds, “these experiences are so humbling and positive. It made us understand that we have to really prove ourselves here and we have to bring our A game. We are taking this very seriously.” As they have their careers. During the past 12 years Humm and Guidara have taken their joint business ventures extremely seriously. The two first met in 2006 when, hired by hospitality genius Danny Meyer, they were put in charge of running his restaurant Eleven Madison Park in the heart of New York City.
Swiss-born Humm had moved to the US just three years prior, to take on a position at the iconic Campton Place Hotel in San Francisco. There he quickly made a name for himself gaining recognition for his creative style of refined, contemporary French cuisine, which also caught the eye of Meyer. Guidara meanwhile had worked with Meyer’s Union Square hospitality group, hoping to one day run Shake Shack. “I had no desire to work in a fine dining restaurant,” he recalls. “But joining Eleven Madison Park changed everything. Through meeting Daniel and working with him, I realized that I was born to be in fine dining. I just hadn’t ever met the right chef.” The two men found in each other a kindred spirit and as brothers in arms, they fought to make Eleven Madison Park their own. In 2011, after running it for five years, the pair acquired the restaurant from Meyer. “That was probably the biggest turning point for us,” Humm says.
Over the years, the pair has evolved Eleven Madison Park from a French-American brasserie serving 400 people a night to a fine dining destination, seating just 80 during a service. The restaurant has undergone a series of reinventions to find its own identity, a journey indicative of the duo’s own personal growth. Humm and Guidara centred its focus on its location, its sense of place, with favourite New York food traditions getting an inventive and luxurious overhaul. For a time dishes were accompanied by local history lessons from the front of house team, while during another phase an array of tableside theatrics and gimmicks enticed guests. Last year that journey of reinventions culminated in a six-month closure for a complete refurbishment, which just so happened to coincide with Eleven Madison Park’s most pivotal moment: ranking top in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
“Being named the best restaurant in the world at a time when we were closed was really weird,” Humm admits. “But,” he adds earnestly, “in that moment, it felt like everything had come together. We hadn’t ever designed the restaurant so the refurbishment made it fully ours. As a chef I have only really found myself in the last two years and today, Eleven Madison Park is better than it has ever been before. I have found my own language and I know exactly what my food is. And that is an amazing feeling."
In Los Angeles that amazing feeling has now captured Downtown. But Humm, insists, openings are no walk in the park. “We are bringing our culture to Los Angeles and that’s always a challenge,” he says. “But we’re very lucky that we have a lot of amazing people who have worked with us for a long time so we were able to bring a great core team with us.” Guidara adds that a total of 30 team members from New York moved to LA for the NoMad opening, helping the duo train the remaining staff. “A lot of hands went up when we asked who wanted to move here,” he laughs. “It’s an easy time to be here.”
What makes it easy too, he insists, is the relationship with the hotel’s developers the Sydell Group, which works because everyone brings the thing that they do best to the table. “It’s great because of the collaboration but also the absolute autonomy,” Guidara explains. “Our relationship with Sydell in many ways is the same as our relationship with each other. Nothing happens unless everyone agrees and even though that’s really hard at times, it forces you to reconsider and so you end up making the best decision for the project as a whole rather than just one specific area.”
With all dining and drinking areas in public spaces serving food that caters for all occasions and an award-wining bar program to match, NoMad LA has quickly become a destination for both locals and travellers. “Our ethos is to fully embrace whatever it is that we’re doing,” says Guidara. “With NoMad, we love the idea of this grand hotel where the restaurant and the hotel are one. There’s a sophistication, comfort and luxury but coupled with contemporariness and casualness, making it an experience you would be happy to have every day.”
For Humm developing the menu for the main restaurant, Mezzanine, has been a process of discovery. “The seasons here in California are very different to New York and from an ingredient point of view, it’s just been amazing to be able to cook with such wonderful fresh produce,” Humm enthuses. Together with executive chef Chris Flint, who worked at NoMad New York and Eleven Madison Park, he’s created a menu for local tastes, one that is authentic to LA through his own unique lens. While certain dishes have come over from New York – such as the iconic roast chicken for two with black truffle and brioche stuffing – the menu leans toward lighter, produce-driven fare such as beets roasted with mandarin, endive and coriander; or black cod seared with red kale, pears and horseradish. “Sea urchin is a big thing here in LA so we’ve created a dish with little crepes, sauces and toppings that diners can eat with their hands,” Humm adds. “LA is all about Mexican food [tacos] so people know how to eat like that here.”
Downstairs, the Lobby is an all-day restaurant and bar nestled beneath the building’s original blue and gold Italianate ceiling. “We made the decision that the whole downstairs lobby area would be more casual and we had fun creating a menu with some riffs of some of our more upmarket dishes,” Humm explains. A case in point is the chicken Milanese, a more casual take on the roasted chicken from upstairs, with apple, celery and black truffle, and the milk and honey ice cream sandwich, which reinvents the famous NoMad dessert.
NoMad LA has quickly emulated the success of its New York sister thanks to Humm and Guidara’s ability to take a winning formula and tweak it in just the right way to make it relevant in a city 2,500 miles west. Later this year, the team will be going through the same process again, when the new NoMad Las Vegas will open its doors. The hotel will feature 292 guest rooms and suites, a private swimming pool, casino and a restaurant and bar by the duo. Guidara hopes that after the LA opening, Las Vegas will be less of a challenge. “The strategy of Vegas being so close to LA and so many of our top people being out here was very intentional,” he says. “After LA, our team will be very well equipped to handle the Vegas opening.”
Twelve years ago, Humm and Guidara found in each other a hospitality soul mate. And just like Downtown LA’s transformation, the two have grown together, succeeded together and formed a bond that will last a lifetime. “We’ve grown up together,” says Guidara. “We went from acquaintances to best friends and now we’re brothers. We know we’re together forever.”
