Mixed Company - An artist alliance between chef Daniel Humm and painter Francesco Clemente blossoms in a new bar

Three years ago, Francesco Clemente was in his Manhattan studio speaking with a friend, a devoted vegetarian, by phone. “She was asking me if we should go have a meal at Daniel’s restaurant,” recalls Clemente, meaning the much-acclaimed and then newly plantbased Eleven Madison Park, helmed by chef Daniel Humm. “I said to her, ‘I don’t know Daniel.’ And then the bell rang, and Daniel was in the room.”

- By Grace Edquist

Three years ago, Francesco Clemente was in his Manhattan studio speaking with a friend, a devoted vegetarian, by phone. “She was asking me if we should go have a meal at Daniel’s restaurant,” recalls Clemente, meaning the much-acclaimed and then newly plantbased Eleven Madison Park, helmed by chef Daniel Humm. “I said to her, ‘I don’t know Daniel.’ And then the bell rang, and Daniel was in the room.”

Humm, consistently recognized as one of the best and most innovative chefs in the world, was tagging along with the gallerist Vito Schnabel, a mutual friend, who had some business to attend to with Clemente before he and Humm continued on to the US Open. To Clemente, this was no coincidence. “I’m very good at not second-guessing anything that happens,” he says. “That is my only compass.”

An image from a book to be published this fall as a collaboration between Clemente an Humm.