About

A hearth, a small team, a list of farms.

Ember & Oak opened in the spring of 2022 in a converted mechanic's garage on Hudson Street. The hearth was the first thing installed. Everything else was built around it.

Mara Ellison

Chef & Owner

Mara grew up cooking on a wood stove in rural Vermont. She trained at the Culinary Institute of America and spent the next twelve years in the kitchens of Saison in San Francisco, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and a formative stage at Etxebarri in the Basque Country, where she first learned the long, patient way of cooking over embers.

She came back to New York in 2019 and spent two years walking the Hudson Valley, meeting farmers, before signing the lease on a garage on Hudson Street. She built the hearth with a mason from Pittsburgh who specializes in wood-fired ovens. The kitchen opened in April 2022.

She is named a Food & Wine Best New Chef (demo) and has been a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef New York twice. She still works the hearth herself six nights a week.

The team

The people behind the fire.

  • Daniel Okafor

    Chef de Cuisine

    Daniel runs the line alongside Mara. Ten years at Blue Hill and two at Hartwood in Tulum. He manages the daily menu and the farmers' calls.

  • Sasha Volkov

    Sous Chef, Hearth

    Sasha trained at Etxebarri and keeps the embers. She built our ash-rub protocols and runs whole-animal butchery on Mondays.

  • Iris Tanaka

    Pastry

    Iris came from Lilia in Brooklyn. Her fire-toasted meringues and buckwheat crumbles define the back half of the menu.

  • Noah Bennett

    Beverage Director

    Noah writes the list. A decade at Rouge Tomate, a love of old-world producers, and a deep bench of natural and classical pours by the glass.

  • Priya Shah

    General Manager

    Priya ran the floor at Gramercy Tavern for six years. She hires for warmth first, technique second, and keeps the room on rhythm.

  • Thomas Reilly

    Butcher & Dry-Age

    Thomas comes from a family butcher shop in Cork. He manages the dry-age room and the in-house charcuterie program.

Sourcing

Farms and purveyors we know by name.

Our vegetables come from eleven farms within 200 miles. Our beef is dry-aged at the kitchen from a single Oregon ranch. Our fish comes off boats in Montauk, Long Island, and Galicia. Here are the people we buy from.

Lakeside Farm — Rhinebeck, NY
Leafy greens, alliums, heirloom tomatoes. Six years.
Ironbound Ranch — Joseph, OR
Dry-aged grass-fed beef. Single-ranch sourcing, whole animal.
Hudson Valley Duck — Ferndale, NY
Pekin ducks, daily delivery. Heritage Long Island line.
Montauk Shellfish Co. — Montauk, NY
Day-boat oysters, scallops, diver clams.
Cascun Farm — Greene County, NY
Heritage pork and pasture-raised lamb.
Stonewall Dairy — Hawthorne Valley, NY
Cultured butter, fresh curd, clabbered cream.
Galicia Direct — A Coruña, Spain
Wild turbot and percebes, flown weekly.
Blackbarn Orchards — Accord, NY
Heirloom apples, stone fruit, cider vinegars.
Mountain Sweet Berry — Roscoe, NY
Strawberries, husk tomatoes, shelling peas.
Runner & Stone Mill — Brooklyn, NY
Stone-milled flours for our wood-oven breads.

“Wood is a pantry ingredient. The fire is another cook at the pass. The vegetables are the whole point.”

— Chef Mara Ellison