BACK TO THE LAND

For his next New York City restaurant, chef Daniel Humm heads to Greece and learns from the country's millennia-old food traditions

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Isternia Bay on the Cycladic island of Tinos, with nearby Syros on the horizon

ON A MARCH MORNING LAST YEAR, the chef Daniel Humm and members of his team from his three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, in New York City, climbed into several pickup trucks and drove into the scrubby mountains of Crete. For two hours, along winding roads and up steep hills, they followed a local goatherd to his mitato, the stone hut from which he tends his flock.

What happened next, Humm says, “was like a spiritual experience.” The group participated in the humane slaughter of one of the animals, prepared the meat together, and shared a meal with their hosts. “It was inspiring to watch this process, and the seriousness about it,” he tells me. It was a profound lesson not only in the island’s agricultural traditions but also in relating to food and the earth. “There is a sense of respect everywhere in Greece,” he says. “Respect for water, the ingredients, the animals, the environment—everything.”