Daniel Humm opens his first standalone Manhattan restaurant, Humm, 10 October

Humm, Daniel Humm's first-ever standalone Manhattan restaurant, opens to diners on 10 October. The chef best known for three-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park has taken over the former EN Japanese Brasserie space at 435 Hudson Street, in a project he calls his most personal yet.

The ceiling

The opening is nearly two years in the making and built around a single commanding feature: a 1,200 sq ft fresco on the tray ceilings, painted by Italian artist Francesco Clemente. Clemente spent two months on the work, filling the ceiling with stars, animals, trains and ticking clocks in an allegory of passing time.

Humm and Clemente had collaborated before, on the hand-painted murals in Clemente Bar, the lounge tucked into Eleven Madison Park's second floor. The artist had also produced a portrait of Humm and the painting the chef used to propose to his wife. Even so, this commission had its moments.

Humm recalls receiving a three-week silence after Clemente first saw the scaffolding, followed by a text in all capitals: 'I'M FREAKING OUT.' The freakout proved unfounded. Once the room was lit and nearly finished, Clemente typed a follow-up verdict on the finished space: 'it's beyond.'

The interiors

The interiors are the work of New York and Paris-based designer Pierre Yovanovitch, for whom Humm marks a first New York restaurant. Yovanovitch credits the city as his muse, alongside the colours of Clemente's artwork and Humm's vision of elevated wood-fired cooking across the 5,000 sq ft interior.

'It's very hard to work with Daniel because his taste is better than anyone,' Yovanovitch says. 'His house is so nice. Every detail, every piece of furniture, every piece of art, I want to take.' The designer then translated Clemente's palette and the spirit of Manhattan into each of the unfolding rooms.

At the front of the house is a light-filled bar with space for about 30 guests, while across from the maître d' stand is a more intimate burgundy-toned lounge with mustard-coloured velvet banquettes. Postmodernism and the theatre of grand New York hotels, the Carlyle among them, run through the design.

In the bar, geometric tables and chairs evoke the towers of Philip Johnson and Kevin Roche, with a dash of Sex and the City. 'I wanted to go back, but not a pastiche.'

The primary dining room is the pièce de résistance, flanked by a lively open kitchen. Yovanovitch pulled Clemente's hues, gold and burgundy foremost, down to table level through lacquered red partitions that create intimate zones, table lamps and frosted glass chandeliers lending the room a residential feel.

Those zones will host comforting dishes such as charcoal-grilled fish and roast chicken for two. Beneath the painted ceiling, Yovanovitch built a quieter surprise underfoot: intricate stone floors bordered with the same whimsical creatures that appear in Clemente's painting.

Entry is announced by a red textured sculpture by artist Rashid Johnson, set just beyond the host stand. Past it, a wood fire roars inside a monumental tile-clad oven that rises from the open-plan kitchen like a tree trunk. 'I want to open the door and I want to see the fire,' Humm says.

The art

Art carries through the restaurant as it does at Eleven Madison Park and Clemente Bar. Corners hold works by Louise Bourgeois and Roni Horn, while Yovanovitch contributes his own sculptural pieces: a scenic tile mural depicting a dreamy sunset, a red acoustical light shaped like a mushroom above the lounge.

Twisting rope-like tablebases complete the designer's contribution, and further Clemente works appear throughout, including in a private dining room swaddled in a fabric tent. The friends-and-collaborators ethos is central to the project rather than incidental to it, Humm says.

'This place was really created by my friends,' the chef explains. 'My friends are my story.' He compares the restaurant to a home filled with personal objects: 'I said, I want to create a home, and you keep things in your home that are personal to you.'

With no pages of our own on Humm or the chef, this opening arrives as a fresh entry in a New York dining scene we have followed mostly through hotels. It sits on Hudson Street in the West Village, a neighbourhood dense with the kind of considered, design-led rooms travel editors watch.

Humm frames the final product as a labour of love built on mutual respect. 'Because we all respect each other, everyone rises higher together,' he says. 'I think that's what I feel has happened.' The ambition is cohesion, not spectacle alone, across art, food and interior.

Yovanovitch and Clemente stand beside Humm as the three named collaborators behind the room. For Clemente in particular, the ceiling caps a body of private commissions for the chef. For Yovanovitch, it extends a hospitality portfolio into New York for the first time. Humm opens 10 October.

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Images: Chef Daniel Humm at his new NYC restaurant, Humm , which opens 10 October (Image credit: Adrian Gaut); (Image credit: Adrian Gaut)