Between Old and New

It felt apt that Bite’s Eleven Madison Park opulent dinner with Nordstrom during New York Fashion Week came after yet another New York City day of mercurial weather patterns. The morning of had been plagued with storm warnings, schools went remote, and everyone watched as fashionistas faced onslaughts of snowfall from above while navigating fresh slush on the ground. By sunset, the snow had not only stopped, but sidewalk-level evidence had already vanished into storm drains.

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“We are in a situation where we’re pushing the limits of the planet,” William Lundgren, one of the co-founders of the Swedish label, which emphasizes sustainability, said to Family Style at the table. “We’re between the old world and new world right now. As we’ve seen in every social change throughout history, we always will evolve. But now we’re sort of in the middle of it.” 

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Even the venue echoed this: The three-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park launched in 2012 and regularly appears in round-ups of world’s best restaurants. Back in 2021, the restaurant, its menu once packed with immaculately prepared meat options from duck to lobster, relaunched with a completely vegan menu. And yet its current options still cling, at least in aesthetic, to animal-based foods. One of the courses was visually identical to a tin of Ossetra caviar, but was in fact tonburi, a type of seed that has been branded as a vegan caviar alternative, over a cauliflower puree. 

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Rickie de Sole, the former Vogue editor and current director of women’s fashion at Nordstrom, characterized the event as the “most civilized” moment of her fashion week, to knowing laughter. The street-style-razzi were absent, and guests, nearly all clad in black, were a calm, cool, and collected bunch: from fashion mainstays Leandra Medine and Waris Ahluwalia to art-fashion figures Chloe Wise and Matisse Andrews to a bevy of other creatives, including photographers Phil Oh and Jacques Burga, stylists Brie Welch and Gregory Clark and beyond.

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As I befriended the attendee on my right—who at first bristled at the small, meat-free portions before ultimately coming around on dishes, thanks in part to a tangy Blaufränkisch red served with a sweet potato-plantain dumpling—and a second on my left, who, despite my protests passed on the food entirely (he was on a diet, you see), ultimately trading his untouched plates for my empty ones —there was the mutual sense that the spirit of the festivities would last beyond the final bite of food. Which in this case was a chicly thin sesame-chocolate pretzel. As Lundgren reflected, “We’re in a time right now when we have so much things going on. It’s important we keep track of the long-term.”