Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

Daniel and Guidara noticed that the top restaurants in the world were focusing on expressing local culture and history through food. They decided to transform EMP’s menu to be deeply rooted in New York history. Guidara wrote up long, detailed descriptions of each dish and made the servers memorize and recite them verbatim.

In 2012, the new food critic for The New York Times, Pete Wells, came to dine at the restaurant. While this did not officially constitute a review season, the one-off review was nevertheless important. Wells ended up writing a scathing review. The main thing he had disliked about his experience was the overly long meal descriptions given by the servers.

In retrospect, Guidara acknowledges that he has a difficult time balancing trust and control. He had not allowed his staff to speak ad hoc about the dishes and had instead made them memorize a strict script that led to a stiff, overly verbose delivery. Usually, servers were free to read the body language and mood of their guests to gauge whether they preferred conversation, engagement, and long explanations, or whether they wanted to be left alone. With the script, the staff had no room to improvise or adapt. Guidara decided to relinquish control and let the staff explain the dishes as they saw fit.

In 2015, Wells returned for an official review season. He begrudgingly gave EMP four stars, even though he still didn’t like parts of the menu.

Meanwhile, EMP kept moving up the 50 Best list. At the 50 Best Restaurant awards in 2015, rumors spread that it would be named number one. But instead, the restaurant slid backwards from four to five.

After this experience, when Daniel and Guidara were dining at the restaurant—something they did every quarter—they noticed that they kept being interrupted even while in the midst of a deep conversation. They realized that in recent years they had focused on adding more complexity, more flourishes, and more spectacle to the experience of dining at EMP. But in the process, the details had gotten out of hand, to the point where they were damaging the overall experience and creating unnecessary interruptions.

They decided to simplify everything, cutting down the number of courses from 15 to seven. They eliminated the menu, instead encouraging conversations between guests and staff about dining preferences. They increased the number of Dreamweavers from two to four.

At the 2016 50 Best, Eleven Madison Park was number three. The restaurant also won the first-ever Art of Hospitality Award.

The following year, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world. Guidara believes that excellence was what got EMP on the list in the first place, and hospitality was what allowed it to climb to the top.

After the 50 Best awards, EMP closed for renovations and reopened a few months later. Things were going well, but Guidara and Daniel were starting to grow apart. Eventually, they decided to end their partnership. After much deliberation, they determined it was best for Guidara to leave.

Guidara says he is incredibly proud of Eleven Madison Park and what the team achieved over the years.

After he left EMP, the global pandemic hit, and he helped form a group that successfully advocated for pandemic relief for independent restaurants. He also got to spend more time with his wife and his new daughter, Frankie.

He concludes the book by saying that people across various industries have joined the hospitality economy and embraced unreasonable hospitality, and he hopes that the reader will, too.