Adam Waddell

The Climb

Restaurant service is where Adam Waddell learned the basics that matter most in wine: pace, attention, and how to read a dining room without forcing it. In roles at Jean-Georges, Ai Fiori, and Gabriel Kreuther at Various New York City restaurants in New York City, he moved through the floor one service at a time, building palate and judgment through repetition rather than theory. That kind of progression teaches more than sequence; it sharpens timing, listening, and the ability to make each table feel considered. The ladder then narrowed into senior wine responsibility in some of New York’s most exacting rooms. As Head Sommelier at SAGA by Jamal James Kent, Adam Waddell took on the balance between authority and restraint that defines the job. He later served as Assistant Wine Director at Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan, New York (2023–2025), where the work extended beyond selection to coherence across the meal, the list, and the room. From there, he became Wine Director at Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan, New York (from 2025), a role that reflects the accumulation of judgment required to shape how wine supports a dining experience.

Today

At Eleven Madison Park in New York City, Adam Waddell works with wine as structure as much as selection. The list is not treated as inventory; it is used to support the room, set cadence, and connect bottle to plate with precision. That approach depends on the quieter parts of the trade: consistency, memory, and the ability to make each pour sit properly within the meal.

In Their Words “Wine is nature’s composition—shaped by soil, sun, and the winemaker’s hand—performed like music, each bottle a curated expression of place, intention, and the earth’s quiet power.”

Recognition

No awards or formal credentials appear alongside his career arc. The record here is built instead through title, venue, and progression: a route through New York City dining rooms that shows how wine expertise is made, step by step, through service and responsibility.