Will Guidara

Will Guidara is an American restaurateur whose Unreasonable Hospitality draws on his experience co-owning Eleven Madison Park to offer a philosophy of exceptional service and human connection.

Will Guidara is the former co-owner (with chef Daniel Humm) of Eleven Madison Park in New York City, which held four Michelin stars and was named the best restaurant in the world in 2017. Unreasonable Hospitality (2022) is part memoir, part business philosophy — an account of how Guidara and Humm transformed Eleven Madison Park from a struggling hotel restaurant into a global benchmark for fine dining, told through the lens of Guidara’s evolving understanding of what hospitality means.

The book’s central argument is that genuine hospitality — making people feel truly seen and cared for — is not a technique but a philosophy that requires creative, personalised attention to the specific person in front of you. Guidara’s examples of “unreasonable hospitality” (sending runners out to find specific street food a visiting couple mentioned in passing; creating elaborate last-meal experiences) are memorable, and the underlying principle — that exceeding expectations by paying genuine attention generates loyalty and meaning that cannot be replicated — is transferable far beyond the restaurant context.

Unreasonable Hospitality has found readers well beyond the hospitality industry: it has been widely cited in technology, retail, and service businesses as a framework for customer experience. The memoir sections are well-written, the business lessons are concrete without being prescriptive, and the book’s central commitment to excellence as a form of care rather than mere execution gives it an unusual moral seriousness for a business book. A notable omission is extended treatment of the eventual split between Guidara and Humm — a significant episode that the book handles briefly. But as an account of what genuine service culture looks and feels like from the inside, it is one of the better hospitality books of recent years.