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As the name suggests, Eleven Madison Park is located at 11 Madison Avenue on the corner of East 24th Street in New York. Opened in 1998 by principal owner Danny Meyer, the Five-Star restaurant occupies a soaring Art Deco space in the base of the old Metropolitan Life Building.

Eleven Madison Park is located in New York’s Flatiron District on the edge of the lush Madison Square Park — a must-visit not only for its history, but for one of the city’s best cheeseburgers at Shake Shack, another Meyer eatery. The Flatiron Building — one of New York’s first skyscrapers — is easy to spot from just outside Eleven Madison Park.

Located at 11 Madison Avenue overlooking green Madison Square Park, Eleven Madison Park is easily accessible by taxi, public transportation or car. The Five-Star restaurant — known for its contemporary French cuisine from Swiss chef Daniel Humm — is located at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 24th Street in the old Metropolitan Life Building, where a cab or house car can easily drop you at the beautiful Art Deco entrance.

If you plan on taking the subway, hop on the N or R train — which you can catch at Herald or Times Square — to the East 23rd-Broadway station and walk about two blocks to the restaurant. You can also take the 4, 6 or 6 Express to the 23rd Street stop on Park Avenue and walk from there — that’s another easy line accessible at Grand Central Station. If you’re coming in from Brooklyn, take the F or M train to the 23rd Street stop on Sixth Avenue and take the seven-minute walk to the restaurant.

If you want to take in the sights and sounds of the city as you head to dinner, you can also hop on the M1, M2 or M3 bus; they all run down Park Avenue South, stopping about a block from the restaurant.

Of course if you’re taking your own wheels, there are several parking garages in the area, but be warned — it won’t be cheap. Some garages charge about $36 for two hours, plus extra for SUVs.

Eleven Madison Park, a contemporary French restaurant in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, doesn’t enforce a specific dress code, but the Five-Star restaurant is a destination for special occasions, so we’d recommend you dress to impress.

The restaurant requests “proper attire,” but if that’s too vague for you, gentlemen are safe wearing a jacket in the dining room — most men do — and a dress shirt. Ladies’ best bet is business attire, a dress, skirt or nice slacks. The restaurant attracts a lot of local businesspeople out for a night on the town, as well as foodies who love chef Daniel Humm’s clever tasting menu, so you’ll want to dress smartly.

Eleven Madison Park is a culinary hotspot and reservations are hard to come by, so if you’re lucky enough to snag a table make sure you confirm your reservation to avoid losing your spot to someone on the waiting list.

The Five-Star restaurant, known for its ingredient-focused cuisine, will call to confirm your table two days prior to your reservation; if you don’t call back to confirm by 5 p.m. the day before, your reservation will be canceled.

For parties of five or more, you must give at least 24 hours’ notice if you’re canceling your reservation or you’ll be charged $50 per guest. If you get hit with this fee, at least you can feel good about it — Eleven Madison Park donates the full amount to Share Our Strength, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that fights to end childhood hunger.

It’s difficult to snag even a table for two at Eleven Madison Park, so dining with a group at the Five-Star restaurant can be tricky. Eleven Madison Park sits a maximum of six people to a table, so larger parties should be prepared to possibly be split up. Reservations are taken four weeks in advance, so if you know you have a large party, try to give as much notice as possible. The good news is once you’re seated, the tables are quite spacious, giving you plenty of room to move comfortably and carry on a private conversation, even if you’re part of a larger party.

If you’re willing to shell out some cash, Eleven Madison Park does offer private dining rooms that can accommodate larger parties of up to 50 people seated or 100 for a cocktail event, which you can reserve by calling the restaurant directly.

Private dining is the ultimate luxury experience at Eleven Madison Park. The Five-Star restaurant offers two beautiful balcony-level rooms overlooking the main dining room with views of verdant Madison Square Park.

Eleven Madison Park’s private dining area is divided into two rooms, which, when used together, can accommodate up to 50 people seated or 100 people for a cocktail event. The rooms can also be used separately, accommodating up to 18 guests in one and 32 in the other. Both rooms feature stunning 20-foot-high windows, herringbone blond wood floors, brown leather nailhead trim chairs, crisp white linen tablecloths and warm lighting. The windows allow for plenty of natural light and you’ll notice the Art Deco décor from downstairs reflected in the private dining area. The space is completed with landscapes on the walls and gold metallic molding near the ceiling, as well as beautiful floral arrangements on each table.

Of course, if you have a large party, the entire restaurant is available for private functions. Reservations for private dining can be arranged by calling the restaurant.

Eleven Madison Park is housed in an impressive Art Deco building in New York’s historic Flatiron District. The Five-Star contemporary French restaurant is right at home in the distinctive building with a marble entrance and tall windows overlooking the park, allowing in a flood of natural light. Each of the second-floor windows features meticulously carved limestone grills, leaving no doubt that the building is an architectural gem, perfectly complementing the carefully architected cuisine inside.

In Eleven Madison Park’s dining room, the Art Deco details like inlaid wood and the gold leaf ceiling are the focus and are highlighted with simple décor — you’re likely to spot tall flower and twig arrangements throughout the restaurant, though the color and style changes with the seasons. Chairs and banquettes are made of rich black and brown leather and you’ll see elements of the four-leaf motif that adorns the restaurant’s menu throughout the space.

Eleven Madison Park, a Five-Star restaurant located in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, occupies a soaring Art Deco space that sets the tone for a real fine dining experience — right down to the exquisite table settings and glassware.

The restaurant uses elegant, thin-rimmed Riedel glassware for wines and beverages. The brand is credited with creating functional wine glasses for different flavor notes — the elegant glasses enhance the wine in the glass. Some of the glassware is surprisingly large at Eleven Madison Park — they have glasses reputedly big enough to hold an entire bottle of wine.

The rest of the table settings are equally sophisticated with crisp white linen cloths, JL Coquet and Bernardaud china, as well as meticulously polished silverware from Guy Degrenne.

When you dine at Eleven Madison Park you’ll hear jazz playing softly in the background along with some ambient chattering — the space has soaring high ceilings and large windows that carry some sound.

Your table will be spacious with plenty of room to move comfortably and enjoy a private conversation, but the space also allows for noise from the lively bar and other tables to spill over. Though the innovative cuisine from chef Daniel Humm is top-notch, the hubbub of the space makes the restaurant feel less stuffy than some other fine dining spots in New York City. All in all, the sound level is moderately loud, but manageable — your conversation certainly won’t be drowned out by surrounding noises.

Eleven Madison Park can most certainly be characterized as a special occasion restaurant, with its customizable tasting menu and elegant Art Deco décor, but it’s not necessarily a romantic restaurant, as the noise level can be loud — but manageable — due to the high ceilings and sizable bar.
Your date will be impressed with the luxury ingredients and exciting techniques in chef Daniel Humm’s dishes, but keep in mind that it takes a long time to get a reservation (tables are booked 28 days in advance) so we don’t recommend this spot if you’ve just met someone. But for anniversaries and other occasions you can plan for in advance, Eleven Madison Park is a great venue. You and your special someone will enjoy the extensive wine list and decadent desserts, such as a chocolate-peanut butter torte or a cheesecake made with sheep’s milk yogurt.

The Five-Star cuisine at Eleven Madison Park is the work of executive chef Daniel Humm, a Swiss native who began his culinary training at the young age of 14. His cooking is grounded in a traditional French background, but Humm knows how to use delicate flavors, often opting for dishes with light components that contrast with the richness of traditional sauces.

Humm first reached great acclaim as executive chef at Gasthaus zum Gupf, a gourmet Swiss restaurant. He also served as the executive chef at Campton Place in San Francisco, and in 2006 he began his tenure at Eleven Madison Park. He received the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for best chef in New York in 2010, and he currently whips up world-class dishes at this Five-Star establishment.

One of our favorite things about the Five-Star Eleven Madison Park is the mix-and-match menu. It lists just the main ingredient in each dish, allowing you to enjoy a tasting menu of surprises while maintaining some choice.

Once you’re seated at Eleven Madison Park, you’ll be presented with a card with 16 ingredients on it — four different versions of a four-course meal — but you can choose the ingredients you like best in each course. The menu changes often to incorporate seasonal ingredients — you might find a choice of appetizer ingredients such as hamachi, radicchio, langoustine and foie gras while your main entrée could incorporate chicken, pork, lamb or veal. The list is meant to create a dialogue between guests and the kitchen; you should feel free to share your preferences and tell your server about ingredients you dislike — or can’t eat — so the chef can create a meal suited especially for you.
The innovative format allows you to be as adventurous or choosy as you want — a true rarity in upscale dining. Dinner is available as a four-course meal priced at $125 or a tasting menu of about seven courses — it can vary — for $195, with wine pairings also available.

Eleven Madison Park doesn’t distribute a specific gluten-free or food allergy-sensitive menu, but the Five-Star restaurant’s staff goes above and beyond to ensure all guests’ needs are met. Eleven Madison Park’s dinner menu lists courses by principal ingredient, so it’s already quite customizable. The set up was designed to facilitate a dialogue between the kitchen and the diner, making it easy to adjust if you require certain dietary restrictions. On one visit, when the staff was told about a gluten allergy, they brought a small plate of gluten-free bread to the diner and removed the pasta from a lasagna dish, instead providing an extra large portion of the lobster filling — without prompting. Whether you won’t eat meat or can’t touch nuts, just let the staff know and they’ll do their best to accommodate you.

The desserts at Eleven Madison Park are made to complete chef Daniel Humm’s innovative tasting menus. Like the savory courses, the dessert menu changes frequently, but there are a few things you can expect to find during your visit. Needless to say, we recommend you save room for these showstoppers.

The Five-Star restaurant overlooking Manhattan’s Madison Square Park is known for its esoteric ice cream flavors — think cornbread, salted caramel, popcorn or brown butter —complementing more substantive treats such as a gourmet blueberry cobbler, a chocolate-caramel torte, chocolate ganache with chestnut honey and a chocolate-peanut butter tart, respectively.

You’re likely to find a range of petit fours, such as macarons with vanilla or strawberry ice cream layered between them, as well as a cheesecake made with sheep’s milk yogurt. The desserts tend to follow the seasons, so when fall brings its changing colors, look for desserts like the mouthwatering sweet potato beignet.

Though it may vary by the evening and the time of year, guests of Eleven Madison Park are often sent packing with petite boxes of house-made jellies to enjoy on the walk home. Of course the end of the meal isn’t the first time you see special gifts from the chef, as the meal includes a bounty of amuse-bouches to creatively tease your palate, ranging from an addictive sweetbread pocket and savory mushroom tart to foie gras and jelly on a cracker to bigeye tuna, as well as a playful carrot marshmallow.

These may lead into another fun surprise, such as a tomato lollipop served in a basket of cherry tomatoes. Depending on the evening and the mood of the chef, the freebies —either before or between principal dishes — keep coming and coming at Eleven Madison Park.

Although Eleven Madison Park doesn’t have a separate kids’ menu, the youngest food critics are still welcome in the dining room so long as they can sit for a lengthy dinner or lunch. A forewarning: The tasting menu and four-course dinner can be quite adult — with ingredients such as foie gras, sweetbreads and truffles — and it might not be in tune with your child’s palate. But if you have a junior gourmand on your hands, just be sure he or she is tall enough to sit in a regular chair — the Five-Star restaurant doesn’t have highchairs on hand.

We recommend arriving a bit early for your reservation, because Eleven Madison Park’s bar offers up an extensive wine list and artisanal cocktails worth setting aside extra time to enjoy. There are 12 seats at the bar, as well as five tables with leather banquettes — it’s a sizable bar and the cocktail chatter spills over into the main dining area, which helps give the Five-Star restaurant a livelier feel than some other upscale New York restaurants.

You can nosh on appetizers, entrées and desserts at Eleven Madison Park’s bar, as well as get a sneak peek into the action in the kitchen. We’re huge fans of the cocktails, which are sorted into aperitifs and drinks made with light or dark spirits. There are new takes on classics that might have come from a 19th century bartender’s guide, such as the English Milk Punch, made with Jamaican rum, scotch, Batavia Arrack, Darjeeling tea, pineapple and spices.

When it’s time for a glass of vino at Eleven Madison Park, wine director John Ragan is your new best friend. Ragan previously worked as a sommelier at Martini House in Napa Valley and the restaurant inside Domaine Chandon winery in Yountville, California. He relocated to San Francisco to work with chef Daniel Humm at Campton Place, and in 2006, he moved again — this time to New York, to continue his work with Humm as the wine director of Eleven Madison Park. Since Ragan’s arrival, the Five-Star restaurant has garnered praise for expanding its already extensive wine list, known for treasures from France, to include additional international and lesser-known wines. Ragan also won a James Beard Foundation Award for outstanding wine service in 2008.

Just like the constantly changing menu, the cocktail list at Eleven Madison Park features a rotating cast of beverages — from aperitifs to mixed drinks with light and dark spirits. The cocktail menu — which you can enjoy at your table or at the handsome and spacious bar — is unique in that some of the recipes featured come from old bartenders’ guides and recipe books dating back to the late 1800s. For a pre-dinner cocktail, try the Velvet Cobbler aperitif. The specialty drink hails from an 1862 guide, made with Amontillado sherry, Mosel riesling and lemon verbena.

The light-spirited cocktails highlight the Five-Star restaurant’s eclectic selection of foreign liquors. Try the Matcha Flip made with cachaça (Brazil’s signature liquor), Matcha green tea and a whole egg or the San Torino made with Haitian rum, Barolo Chinato (an Italian digestif), Strega (an Italian liqueur) and lemon.

If you prefer something a bit darker, we love the English Milk Punch, made from an 1887 recipe that consists of Jamaican rum, scotch, Batavia Arrack, Darjeeling tea, pineapple and spices. Or opt for the Dark Horse, made with cognac, Guatemalan rum, Averna — a type of amaro made in Sicily — Grand Marnier and cold-brewed coffee.

Eleven Madison Park pays attention to the details, right down to the coffee and tea service before dessert. It is, after all, the last impression the Five-Star restaurant will leave on your memory, and the staff strives to make it a good one.

If you like to end your dinner on a strong note, Eleven Madison Park has a staffer specifically dedicated to running the high-end La Marzocco espresso machine. Guests looking for some showmanship can also ask that their coffee be prepared tableside in a siphon coffee brewer or a Chemex, an hourglass-shaped container made of heat-resistant glass used to brew a single serving of coffee to your taste. Eleven Madison Park uses specially roasted beans from the Chicago-based Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, as well as high-quality, loose-leaf teas, including decaffeinated varieties.