The Fire
Our custom-built wood-fired hearth burns white oak and applewood harvested from a single orchard in the Hudson Valley. Everything — from the bread to the desserts — passes through or beside the flame.
The Story
Fire as
Fire as
a Discipline
Chef Serena Voss spent twelve years cooking in Lyon, the Basque Country, and a remote farmhouse in Umbria before she found what she was looking for: a fire and a room worth returning to.
Ember opened in 2019, a hundred years after the building that houses it was a coalyard. The walls still smell faintly of wood on damp evenings. Serena thinks that is exactly right.
The kitchen has no microwave, no circulator, and no fryer. What it does have is a single eight-foot hearth that burns continuously from mise en place to the last dessert. Every technique — braising, roasting, smoking, baking — is a conversation with that fire. No two nights are identical.
"I did not open a restaurant to replicate what I ate somewhere else," Serena says. "I opened it to show people what happens when you let the fire and the season make the decisions."
Serena Voss
Chef & Co-Founder, Ember