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

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fine dining has long celebrated chefs for being unreasonable about food. Will Guidara’s bet was that nobody had tried being just as unreasonable about how a meal makes you feel.

The bet came out of a humiliation. At the 2010 World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards in London, Eleven Madison Park entered at number fifty — dead last, and called first, so Guidara and chef-partner Daniel Humm learned their faces were on a thirty-foot screen only after the room watched them slump. Over a bottle of bourbon on their hotel steps they reached the real problem: the restaurant was excellent and had changed nothing. On a cocktail napkin they wrote that they would be number one in the world, and before he slept Guidara added two words: unreasonable hospitality. In 2017 they got there.

Will Guidara on SummaryShelf

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