In some ways, Clemente Bar began with a simple, perhaps even off-the-cuff, comment between close friends. Painter Francesco Clemente told Daniel Humm, the Eleven Madison Park chef, that he’d always wanted a drink named after him — in a similar vein of the Bellini, an homage to Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini.
Instead, Clemente now has a entire bar named after him.
“It’s turned into a big project,” says Humm, the afternoon of the bar’s public opening this month. “It turned into really a labor of love.”
Humm has opened the doors to Clemente Bar, located just upstairs from the three Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park. The bar features two new large-scale paintings that Clemente created for the space, as well as a ceiling fresco.
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“It was very powerful to be with Francesco when he first saw it,” Humm says. “He obviously made the paintings, but then when he first saw them installed, which was two weeks ago, he was really overwhelmed by how beautiful it turned out.”
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“I imagine everything I make to come from another place and another time. A place where knowledge is pleasure and pleasure is knowledge,” Clemente says of his inspiration for creating the new pieces for the hospitality project. He describes the ceiling fresco as an image of “joyful interdependence,” while his other two large-scale paintings — “one of a healing procession, the other of a redeeming wave” — suggest “transformative circumstances.”
“The visual refinement of Daniel Humm’s work kept reminding me that, when making a painting, one must be bold and restrained at the same time, concise while not sacrificing detail. The protocol to make something well, in painting as in life, is the same,” Clemente adds.
The bar was inspired partially by Kronenhalle Restaurant & Bar in Zurich, which opened in 1924 and features lighting by Diego Giacometti and art permanently installed from the collection of Gustav Zumsteg. Art also played a central role in the renovation of Eleven Madison, which features works by many of Humm’s artist friends like Rashid Johnson, Rita Ackermann and Olympia Scarry. For Clemente Bar, Humm enlisted architect Brad Cloepfil, who worked on Eleven Madison, as well as artists including Carsten Höller, who created the room’s mushroom lights, and furniture designer Brett Robinson.
“I really give every artist carte blanche,” Humm says. “The one thing that was important to me for the bar was really joy; I wanted it to be joyful. And so that’s the only thing I told Francesco — I just want to have a sense of humor, and I want it to be joyful. And I think that is reflected in the food and in the drinks and in everything else. I hope it will create a lot of amazing memories for people who come spend time there.”
“I share with Daniel Humm an unreasonable love for New York City,” Clemente adds. “The bar is a tribute to the city. Also I believe in the symbolic value of everything, including food. The bar serves plant-based food, and plants mean abundance, renewal and nonviolence.”
All of the food on the menu, like at Eleven Madison Park, is plant-based. The bar features an eight-seat counter that offers a pre-fixe dining experience led by cocktails, as well as a more casual a la carte menu of small bites, like an agedashi tofu tog with black truffles, tempura fries, and Nashville hot portobello mushroom burger.
Eleven Madison Park has been open for 27 years, and Humm has been with the restaurant for 20 of those. The opening of Clemente Bar finally marks a sense of culmination for the chef.
“It’s the first time that I feel the restaurant is complete,” Humm says. “It’s the best it’s ever been — I think the food has really found its place and it has so many elements of our worlds, from the very fine dining, but then also the side of us that is mostly fun and easygoing and relaxed,” he adds. “I’m really proud of it, and I’m proud of the team that has really helped make this come to life.”